Huber Heights city officials are still weighing how to pay for a proposed $18 million music center, but construction may not start until early summer.

City Council is expected to vote Monday night on legislation authorizing city staff to enter into a contract with Conventions, Sports & Leisure to conduct a “validation” study, assistant city manager Scott Falkowski said.

The study is expected to take four-to-six weeks to complete, and a final presentation before City Council will be scheduled in mid-March, Falkowski said.

“Spending a little extra time on a project this big will never hurt,” he said. “Council is comfortable with us taking our time and making sure everything is done right, whatever the final date is.”

Falkowski said it’s “more realistic” the city will break ground on the music center in the early summer “as everything falls into place as we think it should.” The city originally announced in December that it hoped to break ground in early 2013.

The contract with CSL is not to exceed $40,000, and the money will come out of the economic development budget.

City staff will provide CSL the information that it has gathered during the due diligence process, and CSL will run market studies comparing it to similar venues in the country, Falkowski said. Specifics will include how much money a typical show will generate from ticket sales, concessions, and parking, and the value of naming and pouring rights.

“The city can use it as a marketing tool and provide this to developers,” Falkowski said. “We’ve done a lot of work on this already and this will provide a third-party point of view.”

Vice Mayor Mark Campbell said there are details, such as the brick color and type of windows, that can be decided before the final presentation to “make up for that extension.”

“We are still striving to get the shovel in the ground as soon as we can,” Campbell said.

City officials said using TIF money will be the most likely scenario to pay for the $18 million music center. But other funding sources could be state or federal grant money, sponsorships and selling the venue’s naming rights, City Manager Jim Borland said.

If the city decides to use TIF dollars, they will follow the same model it used to build the $6 million Kroger Aquatic Center and $1 million Eichelberger Amphitheater that opened last year.

“The price of this is a lot of money and we feel like this thing will turn a profit for us,” Borland said. “For this price, we want to make sure we do everything correctly.”

Local governments use tax increment financing districts to raise money to pay for projects by using the increase in property value created by the redevelopment to channel revenue back into improvements. TIF money can only be spent on public infrastructure and development projects.

The area north of Interstate 70 near the Ohio 201 interchange was designated a TIF district in April 2003. Late last year, City Council approved three areas in the city as TIF districts where a combined $23 million of new construction is happening.

Campbell said he is in favor of fully funding the music center with TIF dollars.

Once the music center is fully operational, Campbell is still certain it would generate about $500,000 in profit per year, including sponsorships and naming rights. Selling the venue’s naming rights could generate $250,000, Campbell said. The aquatic center netted a profit of $114,375 in its first season of operation.

“We’ll mirror the model of the aquatic center,” Campbell said. “It’s all about developing the Heights. There is some level of risk, but I believe this is good for Huber Heights. I’m confident that if we don’t do anything, we won’t have anything.”

Huber Heights announced last month that the proposed music center would anchor the $220 million Heights commercial development, and City Council unanimously passed legislation authorizing staff to spend $100,000 to research the proposal.

The city recently signed a contract with Brian Kinzelman, senior principal with the Columbus-based architectural firm MKSK. Kinzelman presented City Council with the site plan on Dec. 10, at no cost to the city.

The amount of the contract is $48,500 for professional design services, including urban design, landscape and project architecture, and acoustics. Kinzelman did not return multiple messages and emails seeking comment.

Part of the acoustic design study will focus on site configuration to minimize the impact to adjacent neighborhoods. The noise level was the primary complaint last year from residents who live in close proximity to the aquatic center and amphitheater.

The proposed music center will seat 4,500 people and be modeled after the PNC Pavilion at Riverbend in Cincinnati, according to the contract. The covered venue will require between 1,500 and 2,000 on-site parking spaces.

The city also signed a $15,000 contract with Music and Event Management Inc. to provide its expertise and guidance in the industry, and a $20,000 contract with M-E Companies to do a traffic study. The money for those three contracts will come out of the budgeted $100,000.

The music center is projected to open in the spring of 2014. The 28-acre site would be located off Executive Boulevard.