GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — When Mesa State College students were told the school’s dining hall would move into a tent for 18 months while a new student center was constructed, some worried the experience would feel like eating breakfast under the big top.

“People had visions of a big circus tent with sawdust on the floor,” said Mesa State spokeswoman Dana Nunn.

Now that students have had 10 days to watch the metal frame of the 45-foot-tall, 13,000-square-foot structure go up over a concrete floor and a couple days to see the construction workers fasten vinyl and insulation over the frame, Nunn said nerves have calmed a bit. It doesn’t hurt that word is spreading that the tent will include heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.

“A lot of people were skeptical, but now that they can visualize what it actually is, they think, ‘Cool, this is actually going to work,’” Nunn said.

Not every student is convinced. Brenden Martinez sat in the cafeteria Wednesday afternoon wondering what it would be like to eat under a new, less-solid roof.

“If it’s cold, I’m not going to like it,” he said.

“I don’t mind it as long as the food’s still good, I mean, as long as it’s not cold and crappy,” said Martinez’s friend, Tyler Schafer.

The temporary dining hall, dubbed The Maverick Pavilion, will open Jan. 17, and the W.W. Campbell Center’s cafe and book store will move into the tent during the last week of January. Everything else in the center, including student club and organization rooms, meeting rooms and a Wells Fargo branch, will move into the first floor of Elm Hall. The Campbell Center will be demolished in February.

The situation is temporary for each of the entities being moved, and all will return to the new, two-story student center once it opens in fall 2010. The project will cost $25 million, a figure that includes the cost of the tent.

The Maverick Pavilion will have the same hours as the current dining hall, but students will use plates instead of trays. They’ll also be ushered through kitchens lined up in two trailers behind the tent. Matthew Kelly, a grill cook at Mesa State, said he’s a little worried the college won’t be able to offer as large a variety of food as they do now.

Kelly hears a lot of comments about the pavilion while he grills up food for diners. Some have told him they don’t want to return to the college in the spring because of the five construction projects that will be going on next semester. But Kelly’s attitude is the grilling must go on.

“I wouldn’t look at it as a negative thing. I wouldn’t look at it as an exciting thing either. It’s just temporary,” he said.

Reach Emily Anderson at eanderson@gjfreepress.com.