EverBank Stadium of the Future: Inside Jacksonville's $1.4 Billion Renovate-in-Place

Almost every big stadium job in the country right now gets something Jacksonville doesn't: a cleared site and a calendar that belongs to the contractor. The Stadium of the Future has neither. AECOM Hunt and Barton Malow are rebuilding a 1995 bowl into a 1,886,887-square-foot venue while the Jacksonville Jaguars keep playing inside it, which means the schedule is written by the NFL and the construction team works in the gaps.

That constraint is the whole story of this project. The scope — a perimeter shade canopy on new steel, concourses roughly four times their existing width, a 63,000-seat bowl that flexes to about 70,000, and a full replacement of clubs, suites and back-of-house — would be a straightforward three-year build on an empty parcel. Executed around an occupied stadium with a hard handback every August, it becomes one of the more instructive phasing problems in American sports construction.

The money, and what the permit record actually shows

The public number is $1.4 billion, split $775 million from the City of Jacksonville and $625 million from the Jaguars under the 2024 agreement that also carried a 30-year lease and a non-relocation clause. The city's share includes $150 million earmarked for deferred maintenance on a building that opened in 1995.

The more useful number for anyone tracking this job is the permit record, because Jacksonville publishes construction value by package. The city issued the largest permit on the project — described as the final and largest — on February 27, 2026, at $696.5 million. That single permit covers eight levels and 652,735 square feet: new field-level club spaces, private suites, mechanical, electrical, lighting and fire alarm, low-voltage including network, Wi-Fi and DAS, plus renovated restrooms and concessions. The contractor named on it is the Hunt Construction–Barton Malow joint venture.

Prior permits going back to the December 10, 2024 foundation permit total roughly $640 million, the biggest of those a $532.14 million infrastructure package issued September 11, 2025. Add them up and permitted construction value sits near $1.33 billion, with a sprinkler package of about $6.8 million still pending at the time of that reporting. Permit value is not the same as total project budget — it excludes soft costs, FF&E and owner-direct scope — but it is a public, dated, verifiable proxy for how much building is actually being bought, and it is the kind of number that tells contractors when the big MEP and interiors packages hit the street. Anyone chasing work of this type can watch the same signal on public bid boards.

What is standing today

On August 20, 2026, ahead of a preseason game against Carolina, the Jaguars opened the first finished pieces to the public. Fans walked wider concourses with new gray topping running the full depth, new entry gates and stairwells, redesigned food and beverage areas, and the first shade structures and breezeways that preview how the completed building is supposed to move air.

One detail a superintendent notices immediately: the stadium lighting has been relocated off the risers and up to the top rows. That is a prerequisite move, not a cosmetic one. You cannot demo and rebuild upper-bowl risers with fixtures and conduit still hanging off them, and you cannot fly canopy steel over a bowl where the lighting array is in the way of the pick.

More than 1.5 million craft hours have been logged. In-bowl demolition is open for the corner scenic lookout decks and the upper-bowl rework, and Grand Staircase Two in the northwest quadrant has been going up as its own vertical-circulation package. Roughly 20,000 seats came out, which is why 2026 capacity drops to about 42,465 once temporary seating is set.

The canopy: perimeter steel around an occupied bowl

The signature system is a translucent shade canopy carried on steel trusses erected around the outside of the existing structure. HOK's design target is a reduction of more than 70 percent in heat retention, achieved with the canopy plus landscaped green space, and the building form is lifted at the north and south ends specifically to keep air moving through the bowl rather than trapping it.

Erecting a perimeter truss array around a building that hosts 40,000 people ten times a year is a rigging and hand-back problem before it is a structural one. Every crane position has to clear an egress path that has to be restored before gameday. Every truss section that is set has to be complete, connected and inspected before the public comes back underneath it, or it has to be protected and screened. The team has been raising this steel through the 2026 season with the bulk of the canopy installation planned to intensify in 2027, once the building is empty. That order is not an accident — it is the only version of the sequence that works.

Structural steel pricing is one of the live variables on a job with this much tonnage still to place. Contractors bidding remaining packages can track the underlying index on our steel price page.

The season calendar is the schedule

Three years of phasing map cleanly onto the NFL calendar:

• 2026 — reduced-capacity home games in Jacksonville plus back-to-back London games, which hands the team an extended international window with the building free of fans.
• 2027 — the Jaguars relocate for a full season to Camping World Stadium in Orlando. This is the year the contractor finally gets the whole box, and it is when canopy installation, the remaining bowl work and the heavy concourse structure are set to run without a hand-back.
• 2028 — commissioning, punch and turnover for an August reopening.

The 2027 vacancy is worth more to this schedule than any amount of crew loading. A single uninterrupted year of full site access is what makes a $1.4 billion renovation deliverable in four calendar years instead of six or seven.

Trades and packages to watch

The February 2026 permit is essentially the interiors and systems permit, and it is enormous: eight levels of clubs and suites plus the full MEP, fire alarm and low-voltage backbone. That means the next 18 months are dominated by mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, drywall, millwork and food service — the trades that consume the most manpower on any stadium and that will pull hard on North Florida's commercial labor pool. Estimates circulated during approvals put cumulative construction-related positions over the life of the job in the 17,700 to 18,000 range.

Beyond the CM joint venture, Impact Development Management is serving as owner's representative and Rider Levett Bucknall is handling cost control. Firms looking at the Florida market can size up the competitive field through our contractor directory and the Florida state page.

Why this job matters beyond Jacksonville

Roughly a dozen NFL and college venues built in the 1990s are hitting the same decision point: replace, or renovate in place. Replacement is cleaner to build and far harder to fund. Jacksonville is the current best test of whether a deep renovate-in-place can be delivered on budget and on schedule with the tenant still in the building, and every owner studying that question is watching the permit values, the craft hours and the 2027 relocation year.

For contractors, the transferable lesson is less about stadiums than about occupied-building work generally: the money is made or lost in the hand-back. Wider commercial construction work follows the same rule any time a facility has to keep operating through a rebuild.

What happens next

Interior systems and finishes carry the job through the 2026 season. After the last home game, the site opens up for the heavy 2027 push — canopy steel and membrane, the balance of the bowl, and the concourse structure that has been staged around gamedays. Commissioning starts in 2028 for an August reopening. Team leadership has already floated the building as Super Bowl-ready, which is a claim the completed canopy and the expanded concourses will have to back up.

Questions readers ask

Is the Jaguars stadium being replaced or renovated? Renovated and expanded. The existing structure stays; the bowl, concourses, clubs and back-of-house are rebuilt and a new perimeter shade canopy is added on new steel.

Who is building the Stadium of the Future? AECOM Hunt and Barton Malow as a construction manager joint venture, with HOK as architect. Impact Development Management is the owner's representative and Rider Levett Bucknall is on cost control.

Where do the Jaguars play during construction? At EverBank Stadium at reduced capacity in 2026, plus two London games. For the full 2027 season the team relocates to Camping World Stadium in Orlando so the contractor gets uninterrupted site access.

When does the stadium reopen? August 2028, in time for that NFL season.

What is the capacity when it is finished? A 63,000-seat bowl that expands to roughly 70,000 for college football and large concerts.