JUPITER, Fla. — When the Cardinals open camp Monday, the first official workout of spring will begin the last spring before an overdue overhaul of their longtime Florida home helps them build momentum in baseball’s latest arena of competition.

A $108 million plan to renovate Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium and the complex the Cardinals and Miami Marlins share is scheduled to start soon after the clubs leave for the coming regular season. The team’s current buildings will be torn down and replaced on each side with expanded facilities that will sport swank clubhouses, theater-seating meeting rooms, and sleek, two-story gyms, one for each team. Near their new building, the Cardinals will have a seven-tunnel batting cage, complete with a walkway that allows fans a peek at the action inside.

After several years of trying to update and upgrade the facilities, the Cardinals hope the two-year project will keep their spring home’s cozy feel but make it far less confining as they commit to remain there through at least 2049.

“What we’re about to embark on is really the modernization of what the current arms race looks like in spring training facilities,” said John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations. “Both the Marlins and Cardinals have a shared interest in how we can improve, how we can grow and how we can create a more competitive environment with this arms race. The modernization of this facility, I hope, is helpful for our fans because they’ll see new stadium improvements. And from behind the curtain side of things, our players will have access to a more modern training facility.”

Palm Beach County commissioners approved the agreement and county-issue bond funding this past May. All of the plans remain contingent on Palm Beach County’s final approval on funding and the successful issuance of bonds, which is expected in April.

The Cardinals and Marlins will have to cover any overages on spending, and they are also contributing 38% of the cost, or between $20 million and $25 million each.

The goal is to have a new, up-to-date complex ready for spring 2025.

Some construction could begin within days of the teams leaving in March with teardowns of the buildings starting possibly by May. The teams plan to have their Florida State League teams continue to play at Roger Dean Stadium for this season and next, during the construction. Elements of the stadium renovation are scheduled to be completed by next spring but not the team facilities.

The Cardinals intend to have their 2024 spring training on the site and games at Roger Dean, Mozeliak said. How that will look — temporary clubhouses constructed on a back field are one possibility — is still being finalized.

“Navigating construction — where we play, how we play and how we think about development are going to be on the forefront of a lot of minds as we move forward,” Mozeliak said. “There are going to be some growing pains to get to where we go.”

Throughout the majors, camps open Monday with workouts for pitchers and catchers who will later be reporting to national teams and the World Baseball Classic. More than two dozen Cardinals, including Team USA pitchers Adam Wainwright and Miles Mikolas, are already in the area and most have been working out at their facility for several weeks. The Cardinals’ first official workout for all pitchers and catchers will be Thursday.

The full squad will work out for the first time next Monday, Feb. 20.

Since 1998, the Cardinals have made the Abacoa neighborhood in Jupiter, Florida, their spring training home. Before an extension, the current agreement keeps them through 2027, but how they’ve outgrown the facility is obvious as they set up for their 26th year there. The Cardinals rented space in a building across the street to build a training room for minor leaguers and other uses. A large tent was being constructed outside the clubhouse this past week to give the team more space for meetings or eating. A smaller tent and padded floor is immediately outside the weight room, which is overflowing just a few years after a wall was knocked down to give it additional space.

A trailer is pulled up alongside the clubhouse and outfitted as a kitchen.

In the decades since the Cardinals relocated to the Atlantic coast, spring training facilities have seen increasing investments to outfit with bleeding-edge workout and training facilities and high-tech pitching and hitting labs. They are year-round homes for player development and more and more a performance headquarters for big-league teams.

“Every year, I come down here it feels like it keeps getting smaller and smaller,” Mozeliak said. “It hasn’t changed. The demands of what go on in those rooms are going up. This was built with a vision in 1997 to open in ’98, and the game has changed. The original design of this building I think was perfect. If you could say, ‘What would you have done differently?’ It would just be — make it bigger.”

The update will at least double the current size of the Cardinals’ facilities — while not spilling over the current footprint of the campus.

It can keep some of the comforts and be less cramped.

“We don’t want to lose the heart and soul about what this complex is about,” Mozeliak said.

The planned improvements have already started. Two high-resolution scoreboards have been installed at the main stadium, complete with the pitch clock to count down for this year’s new rule. In the first phase of construction, the stadium will get a new, 3,000-square-foot team store will be prominent beside the home-plate entrance. The capacity of the ballpark won’t change from around 6,800, but style of seating will in left field where bar stools and rails will create a standing room and socializing area, an official described.

There will be public Wi-Fi at the main stadium, and the entire complex will be wired to provide access far on the back fields for coaches and their latest data-gathering gadgets.

The bullpens, currently in foul territory along each base line, will be moved off the field, and to make room the walls in the corners will come in, changing the dimensions of one of the hardest ballparks to hit each spring. A new visiting clubhouse will be constructed to meet current requirements, which include larger training facilities and changing areas for both men and women. The umpires will be getting their own locker room.

On the Cardinals’ side of the complex, a new rectangular clubhouse will be constructed with all of the modern amenities of a major-league stadium’s clubhouse.

(The Marlins are going with an oval clubhouse.)

The Cardinals will have a commercial grade kitchen, more space for offices, and a two-story gym that has cardio on the second floor overlooking a larger workout space and weight training equipment. The training facilities and equipment will also be upgraded, as is standard at newer spring complexes, such as those in Arizona or nearby West Palm Beach, Florida. The batting cages will have access for fans and be large enough that, on rainy days, it can host anything from infield work to pitchers’ bullpens. An agility field will be cradled in a nook between the eastern expansion and northern expansion of the building, Mozeliak described.

The new batting cages will pair with the hitting lab barn raised three years ago to give the Cardinals more locations for the use of advanced tech and a home for the pitching lab and its gear that is mostly up and running, but is now moveable. 

Currently, any meeting of the minor-leaguers means an overstuffed multipurpose room where there’s standing-room only spillover into the hallways. The next building will have a larger meeting room that is akin to a movie theater. It’s built for “ball talk,” but multimedia. An artist rendering of the meeting room — which illustrates the concept and may look different upon completion — includes a mural with the Cardinals logo and the phrase: “Winning is a tradition, winning is an expectation.”

Marlins general manager Kim Ng and Mozeliak attended the annual “Spring Training Kickoff” breakfast hosted by Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce this past week and offered glimpses and details about the “modernization” and two-year makeover.

“I’m not sure our guys are going to want to break camp to go back down to the Miami stadium,” Ng joked after discussing the Marlins’ new-look clubhouse, per baseball writer and freelance journalist Joe Capozzi’s report on the event. “The whole facility is just going to be quite the display for all of those around Florida who are coming. Free agents, potential free agents from other clubs. When they see this, this is going to be a huge attraction.”

The Cardinals hope for a huge advancement.

“I’m excited about it, and I also understand the next 20 months could be daunting,” Mozeliak said. “We need it. You hate to always say keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality, but you look around what is happening — go 15 minutes from here and see what Houston and Washington share, and good for them. There is a competitive advantage when you have a little more space, and we need that.”