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Fans who made frequent trips to the Lehigh Valley each summer to watch Eagles training camp practices won’t have as many opportunities this year to see new coach Chip Kelly get his team prepared for the season.

But the organization hopes that its camp relocation from Lehigh University to the team’s home stadium and South Philly headquarters enhances the overall fan experience.

Team president Don Smolenski acknowledged Friday that roughly four or five training camp open practices will be conducted this summer at Lincoln Financial Field, which is fewer than the number of practices available to the public for the past 17 years at Lehigh.

The payback, Smolenski added, is that practices at the stadium can hold far more fans than the grandstands at Lehigh and are located much closer to fans who live in the city or its nearby suburbs.

“I think with the open practices at the stadium certainly we can accommodate more people,” he said. “It’s at a location where people can get through the highways and infrastructure and we can schedule those well in advance so people can mark them on their calendar and it can become a destination.”

The Eagles are moving out of Lehigh, their preseason headquarters since 1996, and joining the growing pack of NFL teams opting to hold camp in their own confines. They became the league’s 21st team to keep camp at home and could soon be joined by the Arizona Cardinals, who are mulling a similar decision.

Not since 1943, when the Eagles practiced at St. Joe’s University, has training camp taken place within city limits.

The Eagles were contractually bound to having 2013 training camp at Lehigh but Smolenski said University officials graciously allowed the Eagles out of the deal.

“Lehigh and us, we’re good,” he said. “We’re in a very good place.”

Smolenski said he anticipated that some fans would be unhappy with the decision and others would appreciate the change.

“We weighed a lot of factors into the decision,” Smolenski said, including the team’s relationship with Lehigh and the Bethlehem community. Lehigh Valley summer tourism and business stand to take a hit without the tens of thousands of Eagles fans who travel there each summer.

“There’s probably opposite ends of the spectrum, that there would be some that might be unhappy and there would be some who were thrilled,” he added. “At the end of the day, we had to try to look at what is in the best interests of the organization, what is best for the players to be able to be training for the season, be ready for the season, and our abilities to be able to accommodate the fans in a public environment and share in that experience with them.”

Along the with the small handful of Linc practices -- the exact number has yet to be determined -- the team will have roughly 9-12 more sessions at the NovaCare Complex, but contractual agreements with the city and the surrounding neighborhood restrict the numbers of fans that can be invited to observe at the team’s pristine practice facility.

Those practices will open for about 300-400 sponsors, corporate partners, private guests and credentialed invitees, Smolenski said.

The team has spoken with the Flyers and parent company Comcast Spectacor about making parking lots available, free of charge, for the open Linc practices. The team has an arrangement to use the parking lot adjacent to their home facilities for the NovaCare practices.

“We have agreements in place in terms of working together on events like that,” said Smolenski, speaking to a roundtable of reporters inside the NovaCare cafeteria. “Everybody is supportive.”

Although Kelly, who was known for holding closed practices when he coached at the University of Oregon, is said to have endorsed the decision, Smolenski called the change “an organizational decision” that team brass had first started to ponder several years ago.

Technological advancements throughout the years, including the heavy reliance on wireless internet service and the move from playbooks on paper to iPads, required the organization to haul more equipment and maintenance items each summer through the mountains that surround the Bethlehem-based university.

Although the Eagles first mulled a potential move out of the Lehigh Valley years ago, they didn’t follow through because of former coach Andy Reid’s fondness for the atmosphere and environment away from home.

Reid, who coached 14 seasons in Philadelphia, believed that his bunked-up players would bond quicker in dorm rooms, where they were forced to live, sleep and mingle in close quarters.

Kelly, who’s known to be big on incorporating science and technology into his practices, hardly pushed to maintain Reid’s summer tradition.

“With I think the way our players want to prepare and Coach wants to prepare them for the season, combined with the weight room and with the medical facilities, the meeting rooms, the space, the video and teaching tools, it’s all right here,” Smolenski said. “You’re not driving back and forth over the mountain. You’re not isolated. You’re not split up in dorms rooms. Everything is right here.”

Many of the major details, including dates and times of all camp practices, have yet to be ironed out. It’s unknown whether Kelly plans to have his players housed in a hotel during camp or if they’ll be allowed to go home.

Smolenski said the team is also still working through its plans for fan entertainment at the Linc practices that would be similar to the “NFL Experience” tents and areas at Lehigh practices. Plans for the annual “Flight Night” practice are also ongoing.

“We’re hoping we can still make that happen because that’s important to us as well,” he said.

By holding practice at the Linc, Smolenski said the team can enhance some of its fan-friendly events. He mentioned Military Day, a popular fan event that honors servicemen and servicewomen by inviting them on the field and having them meet and take pictures with Eagles players and coaches.

“In some respects we have greater flexibility to do even bigger events, so rather than just have 100 military members now we have the ability to reach out to all branches of the armed services because we have so much seating sections, so much availability and capacity,” he said. “We can do so much more. So we have less [open practices], hopefully we will take the less-is-more type of approach. That’s our plan.”