The Moss Performing Arts Center and the Robinson Theatre have seen restricted usage of certain classrooms, hallways, offices and practice rooms since the beginning of the semester for students. CMU’s construction team failed to meet its original July 2025 deadline and the decreased space has proved troublesome for students.

In addition to Robinson Theatre’s closure, Love Recital Hall will receive its own renovation from CMU’s construction team in November. Some of the renovations to Robinson Theatre and Love Recital Hall include new flooring, a recording studio and new lockers for the music locker room.

In the meantime, orchestra students must move their November rehearsals to a rehearsal room in the Asteria Theatre across campus.

“The closure of Love impacts orchestra rehearsals on a weekly basis, from November on,” senior music business major and cellist in the CMU orchestra Angel Lovato said. “That is our main rehearsal space, and it is frustrating that we now have to find a place big enough for our large ensemble.”

Currently, the music and theatre departments remain low on classroom space. Practice room usage is also limited, as most of the rooms require additional construction time for the aforementioned new flooring.

The theatre department now hosts all their tech classes out of the production shop in the Asteria Theatre, and both music and theatre departments utilize its rehearsal room backstage as a classroom.

“As a drummer, I get one practice room in the middle of a hallway that they have been absolutely gutting over the last couple of months,” sophomore commercial music major and drummer Paul Dietrich said. “And they finally got it put back together, but for a few weeks they kept saying that they would do construction in the morning and the room would be open in the later morning and early afternoon for use for lessons and such things, but then they delayed the projects in the morning to do it during the day, which significantly interrupted our activities.”

Students are required to sign up for practice rooms for an hour-long time slot between 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.. However, the schedule is not actively enforced. Students report many instances of not finding a room when they go to practice, even when they signed up for one during that particular time slot.

“The practice rooms [are] a huge problem because there’s, like, 80 of us in music [education] alone, and there’s eight practice rooms currently,” sophomore music education major Creager Gould said. “If you don’t get to practice, you just don’t get to practice some days.”

Gould believes the construction may not be worthwhile.

“With the amount of inconvenience they’ve been causing us, and the amount of times they’ve been behind schedule, it’d better be worth it,” Gould said.

Some students are looking forward to the proposed recording studio.

“I think the recording studio idea that they have is a…really cool idea, and I hope that brings more majors, more ideas,” Lovato said when asked whether she thought the construction was worth it.

Many other music students see the current inconveniences as necessary for the university’s long-term investment in the Moss Performing Art Center’s three departments.

“I think it is a beautiful beginning to the boost of the arts at Colorado Mesa University,” sophomore music business major and vocalist Taegan Metz said. “I think that there’s gonna be a big push for music stuff, and I think that it’s really great that we have the program that we do, and the professors that we do, so I think it’s fabulous.”

Metz continues encountering the same inconveniences as other music students.

“The use of the practice rooms and the use of certain classrooms has moved all of our stuff around, and it has been a bit difficult, but it’s definitely worth it for the outcome that we are gonna get,” Metz said.