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Max Ferguson didn’t know many of the details of the new Portland Sea Dogs clubhouse being built right behind the left field line at Hadlock Field. He just saw the outside of the two-story building, the green paint, and the one window.

“Your imagination’s kind of just running wild,” the Sea Dogs second baseman said Thursday. “You have no idea what it’s really going to look like when you get in there.”

The new clubhouse opened June 17, and Ferguson and his teammates got their answer. They saw the new batting cages, the spacious gym and the sparkling new locker room.

“It’s a pretty cool upgrade for all the players,” Ferguson said. “It’s definitely exciting whenever you get something new. … Everything’s pretty much just state of the art, and it’s been a lot of fun for the guys to get a new change of scenery.”

A project four years in the making has been completed, and brought the Sea Dogs up to code. The $10 million facility measures 20,410 square feet, nearly triple the size of the roughly 7,100-square foot facility that now serves as the visitors’ clubhouse. The new clubhouse features separate changing rooms and offices for managers, coaches and roving instructors from the Boston Red Sox, male and female locker rooms for umpires and ground crew members, and more spacious and up-to-date training facilities and locker rooms for players.

“The entire experience has been great. It’s a state-of-the-art facility,” Sea Dogs president Geoff Iacuessa said. “… (The players’ feedback) has been outstanding. They’ve all raved about it. They’re all really appreciative.”

Clubhouse manager Mike Coziahr called the Sea Dogs’ former clubhouse his “most special place on earth,” but said the new place is a clear step up.

“We’ve gone from what I thought was a pretty good size facility to a much bigger facility,” he said. “(We’re) very happy to be over here. Virtually everything about this is so much better and so much nicer. … It’s a much more professional, polished atmosphere than it was.”

The planning for the new facility began in 2021, when Major League Baseball took over its teams’ minor league affiliates and required each one to have both home and visiting team clubhouses. The Sea Dogs were having visitors use locker rooms at the neighboring Portland Expo, so they had to build to become compliant with the code.

Now, with visitors able to use their own in-house clubhouse and the Sea Dogs working in a brand-new facility, Iacuessa said Boston’s Double-A affiliate has a big-league feel.

“There’s no doubt,” Iacuessa said. “We wanted the players to be able to come in, and the Red Sox to be able to come in, and feel like they had a great facility to be able to develop players. Have the flow be good, have the amenities be good. … (We made sure) the locker room and our facilities didn’t prevent them from being able to do what they need to do to develop the players.”

Part of the requirements from MLB were for the affiliates to have two batting cages side-by-side at the park, forcing a change in Portland where the Sea Dogs had one cage in the old clubhouse and two in the Expo. The new cages are on the second floor of the new clubhouse, and feature a Trajekt pitching machine, which uses a video display to imitate the delivery and pitch type of any MLB or minor league pitcher, allowing a batter to hone his timing and rhythm against a specific opponent.

“My favorite part is going to be the new batting cages,” second baseman Drew Ehrhard said. “They’re huge. They’re gorgeous.”

The Red Sox have a Trajekt machine with each of their affiliates.

“That’s about as close as you can get to simulating real, game-like at-bats,” Ehrhard said. “The accuracy of it, you can pick out where you want it to be, middle, inside, outside, up, down, with just the click of a button. It’s pretty impressive to see that kind of technology here. I really think it’s going to be huge for us moving forward.”

MLB also required a bigger bullpen than the one the Sea Dogs were having visitors use along the left field line, Iacuessa said. That got revamped as well, and is now nearly twice as long at roughly 3,600 square feet, with a new turf surface. The Sea Dogs will use that bullpen, with visitors now using the one behind the right field wall.

“It was really important for us to flow with the stadium,” Iacuessa said. “Fans have said it looks like it’s been here for years.”

The bullpen door leads to the first floor of the clubhouse, and a hallway that leads past offices and locker rooms for video staffers, roving instructors and coaches and the manager before arriving at the 950-square foot gym, which has racks for squats, bench press and pulldowns, dumbbells and kettle bells, an exercise bike and curved treadmill, and a Nordbord machine for hamstring testing.

“It’s so much bigger,” Coziahr said. “The walls are straight up, instead of slanted with the roof. I think it’s maybe three times bigger. It’s huge. … You walk in and it creates the atmosphere that you want to work and put that time in, whereas the other one, you kind of went in and maybe it caused a little more stress. It just was confined and cramped.”

The key piece, however, may be the locker room, which is slightly smaller in overall space than the old one, but which features bigger lockers and more storage space, allowing players to keep their equipment in the locker rather than sprawled on the ground around it.

“It’s a very clean, professional look,” Ehrhard said. “It feels very top of the line. Lockers are huge, there’s plenty of space for all your stuff. It just gives a very pro ball feel to it. It’s a very professional setup.”

The locker room is also offset from the other rooms on the floor. While the old one had constant foot traffic through it on the way to other areas, the new one feels like a sanctum.

“It’s kind of like our own room,” Ferguson said. “The locker room was almost like the foyer of the old clubhouse, where everything and everyone would be walking through the locker room at all times. Now, it’s kind of our own space. I think that’s really nice, too.”

The road to the opening wasn’t always smooth. There was the matter of paying for the facility; Sea Dogs owner Diamond Baseball Holdings paid the $10 million tab, but will be getting back $2 million over 15 years via a tax rebate that was the subject of legislative contention.

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed the construction plans, as did the sale of the team in December 2022. Iacuessa also said the team didn’t want to start building until its lease in Portland was extended; after the lease was extended for 15 years on Sept. 4, ground broke on the clubhouse later in the month.

“This was a significant investment. We wanted to make sure that we were committed to staying in the city,” Iacuessa said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t put $10 million into the ballpark, and then in three years not be able to get a lease extension.”

MLB required its affiliate teams to be compliant by clubhouse standards by Opening Day of this season. Iacuessa said that the Sea Dogs were given an extension because of the reasons for the delays and their starting construction in the fall.

“I tried to stay positive,” Iacuessa said. “Obviously, there are bumps in the road and twists and turns along the way. … I always felt like it made the most sense for the team, the city of Portland and the state of Maine for us to be able to stay here. Even through those bumps, there was never any time where I went home and said, ‘We’re moving’ or ‘This isn’t going to work out.'”

Even to the end, there were hurdles to clear. The Sea Dogs played a home game on June 8, left on a road trip and returned on June 17, giving the team one week to complete the move across the field from the old clubhouse to the new one.

“I think we had six U-Haul loads of stuff,” Coziahr said. “At the end of the day on Wednesday, I expected to be done and unpacked and the clubhouse to be team and player ready. I had apparently bumped my head when I made that (goal), because I was nowhere near it. It took me all week.”

The players were happy with the final result.

“It’s definitely an upgrade,” Ferguson said. “I know a lot of us can’t wait to get back home tomorrow.”