Could some good news be imminent about the Millennium Dome?

The curse of the Dome, which has humiliated the Government and absorbed £1bn in lottery and taxpayers' money, is possibly about to be exorcised by Britain's most successful architectural master-planner, Terry Farrell.

The centrepiece and first phase of the proposed development – the draft of which will be submitted to Greenwich borough planners by the end of this week – is the Millennium Dome. It will be reinvented as a marquee above a new 26,000-seat stadium which the Anschutz Entertainment Group, its operator, says will stage at least 150 A-list performers a year, starting in 2005.

But the future of the 190-acre Greenwich peninsula cannot rely solely on concerts by the likes of Kylie Minogue and Madonna. And – though the scheme seems to cover the urban regeneration spectrum, from 10,000 affordable homes, to schools, business parks and a shopping and leisure zone – its success will remain hard to judge until the first tranche of fully detailed plans are submitted late next year.

But one thing is certain: the plan's ability to recoup the cost of the Dome will be limited. One estimate suggests that about £550m might be gleaned from land sales and a slice of the development's overall profits. And a humming Greenwich peninsula could generate 24,000 jobs and become a stand-alone town housing more than 20,000 people.

The council has already rejected plans that have proposed tower blocks, and Farrell has responded with a medium-rise vision, of nothing more than 19 storeys. His draft has avoided a rigid street grid, and the central, high-density housing blocks are in the form of giant "keeps", divided by a wide arc of parkland.

Even if Greenwich Council thinks the scheme gels, the developers, Meridian Delta – a joint venture involving Quintain Estates and Lend Lease, an Australian group – could still slip up, because the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, can intervene in larger-scale urban developments.