Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram says public transport links WILL be included in plans for Everton's new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock - and says he hopes the scheme will have planning permission by 2020.
The city region mayor also told an audience of business leaders in London that the stadium plan could be a catalyst to help regenerate the whole north docks area.
Everton FC is still working on its funding plan for the stadium, while design work is also going on behind the scenes ahead of the club's planning application.
Mayor Rotheram is part of a Liverpool city region delegation at the Mipim UK property conference in London today.
He was speaking at a debate about sport and regeneration, and raised the Bramley-Moore Dock plans as an example of a project that would be about more than just a stadium.
He said: "We are not looking at a sports stadium in isolation but looking at it as an opportunity to regenerate on a much wider scale.
"We've all been to sports grounds where it's difficult to get to, certainly in a public transport sense. We need to be building in the likes of public transport access to the things we are developing.
"So for instance at Bramley-Moore it will be a stadium but a regeneration project that includes housing, hotels, retail and leisure and other things.
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"But what we will do is ensure that we do have public transport links because getting 20 or 30,000 people out of the football stadium along arterial routes that are already congested is about urban planning."
He added: "The thinking behind it (the regeneration of the area) is as important as the actual architectural design of the football stadium."
And later he said: "It's a brownfield site and it (the stadium plan) will breathe new life into an area that's been crying out for investment for generations."
Asked later about the timing of the stadium scheme, Mayor Rotheram said: "At the moment that still lies with the local authority and the Secretary of State. In 2020 we will have a spatial development strategy which means that the metro mayor takes responsibility then for a lot more of those planning issues.
"We expect that Everton will have a ground before then, so it will have gone through the current regime."
Mayor Rotheram also praised Everton FC's work with local communities, as represented in its Everton in the Community scheme.
Everton's new stadium
That message was repeated by Nick Keller, chief executive of BeyondSport, who hailed Everton as "probably one of the best teams worldwide around social connection", praising the "phenomenal" work of Everton in the Community.
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And he said Everton FC would be thinking about the wider community benefits a new stadium could bring.
He said: "I'm sure... they are thinking about how their kitchens can be used when they're not being used for hospitality. They're thinking about whether they can set up classrooms, whether there should be science, technology engineering and maths programming and education programming. They might be thinking about sticking a health centre in the middle of it, or something around homelessness.
"This is the opportunity around these huge infrastructure builds where we can use sport as the magnet to draw young people in."
He added: "There's so much money being spent and you only need a fraction more to create this multiplier. We're looking to change lives and then have a huge ripple effect around it."
"How can we create a community that lives and thrives around it?"