They unpaved the parking lot and put up paradise.

Apologies to Joni Mitchell, but that is a fine analogy for the University of Southern California's new “temporary” dining venue, the Lot Marketplace.

Located on a former parking lot near Grace Ford Salvatori Hall, the 20,000-sq.ft. Lot is designed to fill the campus's dining needs until the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center is finished in 2010. Then, it's supposed to go away.

Well, maybe, says Trojan Hospitality Services Director Scott Shuttleworth. “We may well decide to keep it even after the Campus Center opens,” he offers. “There may be plenty of business for both to thrive.”

Certainly, the Lot is thriving right now, and little wonder. With high-end concepts like Wolfgang Puck Express, Baja Fresh, Submarina, ZAO Noodle Bar and Red Mango, national chain outlets Starbucks and Carl's Jr., plus an upscale c-store and the temporarily relocated Traditions pub (a campus institution), the place is a foodie funhouse that has drawn crowds of customers since its August opening.

Welcome to life at USC, which enjoys a public school sized student body (current enrollment: 33,500) with private-school sized disposable incomes. That means plenty of deep-pocketed customers for campus services.

It also means sky high expectations. Hence the absence of anything slapdash about the Lot, temporary or not.

“Our students would never stand for substandard facilities, even on a short-term basis,” Shuttleworth says. “Two years may seem like a relatively short time to those of us who work on campus, but to four-year undergraduate students, that's half the time they're here. And who wants to spend half their college years eating in a tent, especially with the tuition their parents are paying?”

Despite the exterior shape, the Lot is no tent, if only because building codes in earthquake-threatened Southern California forbid flimsy structures. Rather, the “temporary” facility has a reinforced foundation, comprehensive plumbing and electrical systems and a shell made by a company (Sprung Instant Structures) that also made semi-permanent facilities in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Inside the structure and its distinctive 39-ft. dome, food stations line the perimeter of the elliptically shaped building, surrounding a central seating area that accommodates 350 diners (another 140 seats are available on the outside patio that rings the structure). Indoor diners can watch news and USC sporting events on six 50-inch flat-panel TV screens, or go online thanks to the complimentary wireless internet access available through the building and its patios.