With the Aegis Park oval looking more like a motocross track than a footy field, North Melbourne will be headed out to the Northern suburbs for preseason training according to chief of football Donald McDonald.

"We're going to train at Craigieburn, Highgate Reserve, which is a great coup because Highgate is the same size as the MCG. It's a footy-dedicated oval, awesome surface, great facilities."

After works are completed, the new community sports hub at Aegis Park will be the same dimensions as Etihad Stadium giving the players more room to run and an ability to increase their fitness levels.

"If we did a training session on an oval the equivalent size of Etihad and did that same session at Arden Street, the GPS results were showing that the players were running up to 2km less because of the dimensions of the ground," McDonald added.

"It was just too small, too tight. So we think this is another thing that's going to help our performance."

The redevelopment will also include 500 metres of other ‘green space’, new lighting, team benches, a new scoreboard, behind goal netting and most importantly, a state of the art playing surface.

North played 13 games at Etihad Stadium and McDonald says the disruption will be minimal.

"The last thing we wanted to do was have any disruption to the way we prepare," he said.

"It's nothing new in a sense. Prior to the last three seasons ...we always had to train at other venues over summer because of cricket being played at Arden St.”

Work is expected to be completed by Christmas, but the grass growing period could take up to two more months.