Jupiter’s Roger Dean Stadium Named For Automobile Magnate

Q: Who is Roger Dean, as in Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter?
A: The automobile magnate, who owned dealerships in four states, got the stadium honor as a Christmas gift from his daughters.
Dean owned financial interests in more than 70 companies nationwide, including 21 car dealerships.
When a stadium had been planned for West Palm Beach, city officials in 1994 agreed to name it Roger Dean Stadium in exchange for a $1 million donation from Dean’s daughters, Patty and Janie. The stadium site was moved to 90 acres in Jupiter’s Abacoa development, and when the daughters made the donation, the stadium was named for Dean.
Construction delays and the ups and downs of major league baseball pushed back the opening from 1996 to 1997 to 1998, and one of the proposed tenants, the Atlanta Braves, who had trained at the West Palm Beach Municipal Stadium since it opened in 1963, moved to Walt Disney World.
But the $28 million ballpark, capacity 7,000, opened for business March 1, 1998, hosting a spring training game between co-tenants St. Louis Cardinals and Montreal Expos. There were speeches by Hall of Famers and a helicopter fly-in for the first pitch, by Dean’s son-in-law, Park Miller. But the stadium really got its official ribbon-cutting in the fourth inning when famed slugger Mark McGwire sent a pitch over the left-center fence. The Cardinals won 5-0.
Dean died at 83 in April 1999.

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