The Cats were to be a key tenant of the Keystone Business Park, whose backers believed the presence of the AFL powerhouse would help lure businesses to the area.
But the developers of Keystone, who were going to gift the club the training centre as part of a unique sponsorship deal, have run into financial difficulty.
As a result, no work has taken place on the facility, which was announced in 2011 and was due to be completed by early 2013.
"We're still dealing solely with Keystone, on the basis that they're still trying to identify some other investors, and we are probably waiting on that to be finalised," Geelong chief executive Brian Cook said after the club's annual general meeting on Wednesday night.
Asked whether the club would make a final call on the future of the training base before round one, Cook said: "Yeah, yeah. Well and truly. It's got to be sooner rather than later."
The Cats were forced to write off the expected value of the training facility ($1.93 million) from their balance sheet when they recently announced their financial results for the 2012-13 financial year.
There is now the very real possibility that the club will have to come up with a new plan for a training facility away from Simonds Stadium.
"We haven't even spoken about it as a board, so we're still dealing with Keystone," Cook said.
"But we would revisit the feasibility study we did seven or eight years ago on this. Our original feasibility study had seven or eight different options we looked at.
"But things have changed. Some areas have become more prominent, like Deakin University. The linkages we have there are more prominent.
"Some are less prominent, like there was a block of land in Lara we looked at. We probably wouldn't look at that again.
"A couple of the schools around the place, the private schools, would come to the fore again.
"The issue is that it's not simply a partnership we want. We would actually love some freehold (ownership of the land) to be honest."
Despite the hiccups so far, the Cats are absolutely committed to setting up an alternative training facility.
"We have to be committed, because we're committed to this ground becoming multi-sport, multi-purpose," Cook said.
"You can see the rugby posts up there tonight. That's for a (Melbourne) Rebels training session tomorrow and I think they play here in a week or two's time, which means we can't always train here.
"The government is using taxpayers' money to build this stadium, so a lot of other uses must happen here.
"We understand it's desirable for us to allow that to happen, and we must train elsewhere."
Twitter: @AFL_AdamMcNicol
