A warehouse with 5.000 tons of dirt inside. A 250-meter-long factory hall where the lights switch on at 6 AM and don’t go off until 11 PM. On paper, both sound like temporary detours in the life of a city. In reality, they’re becoming something far more powerful: proof that “meanwhile use” isn’t a placeholder for real development, but a form of development in itself.
That was the shared heartbeat of two stories told by Daniel Makin from Dirt Factory in Manchester and Jens Laulund from Copenhagen’s Tunnelarena during the ESWAM webinar on November 26, 2025. Different cities, different sports, different contexts, yet the same bold idea: when a building goes empty, a community doesn’t have to wait for the next real-estate chapter to begin. You can write a new chapter immediately, even if you know it will end.
Daniel’s Dirt Factory began with a 28.000 square foot warehouse and a lease that was meant to run four years. Then reality did what it always does: it intervened. The pandemic arrived, timelines shifted and government development plans shortened their runway to just under three years. But Dirt Factory didn’t collapse under the weight of uncertainty, it used uncertainty as fuel. The warehouse became a pop-up indoor mountain bike park that welcomed thousands, hosted community events and partnered with brands like Red Bull. It wasn’t just a fun concept. It was a working model that demonstrated social impact and commercial viability under pressure, which is exactly the kind of evidence cities, landlords and funders struggle to find when they debate whether temporary projects are “worth it.”
The detail that sticks is how physical the commitment is. Moving 5.000 tons of dirt isn’t a metaphor, it’s a logistical operation. Add 41 shipping containers worth of assets, and suddenly “temporary” doesn’t mean light or casual, it means intentionally designed to move. Daniel’s message was clear: if you’re going to activate a space for a limited window, your exit strategy isn’t an afterthought. It’s part of the blueprint. Timing with the owner has to be aligned early, because the most expensive mistake in meanwhile use is investing hard into a space that disappears sooner than your return on investment can mature. For Dirt Factory, Daniel argued that a minimum of four years is typically needed to justify the setup at their scale. Shorter leases can work, but usually only when the capital intensity drops.
The human side is just as real. Recruitment and retention become fragile when a team knows the project has an end date. People can love the mission and still need stability. Meanwhile use demands not just creative programming, but credible employment thinking: how you staff it, how you keep momentum and how you avoid building an organization that can’t survive its own timeline.
Copenhagen’s Tunnelarena brings a different kind of intensity. Jens Laulund described a massive former factory hall, 250 meters long and 32 meters high, repurposed into a basketball destination that opened in June 2024 and runs full days, from early morning to late night. Where Dirt Factory is defined by dirt, ramps and the thrill of indoor mountain biking, Tunnelarena is defined by precision: Olympic-model arena floors, high-end baskets and the deliberate choice to create something that feels special. The point isn’t luxury for luxury’s sake. It’s differentiation. If your building is inconveniently located, or your hall is cold in winter, you have to give people a reason to travel anyway. Destination-making becomes the survival strategy.
One of the smartest design decisions in Tunnelarena is also one of the simplest: shipping containers. Instead of building permanent cafés, changing rooms, toilets, gyms and offices, they put them inside containers; modular, movable and ready for the day the city’s next redevelopment phase arrives. That day is already on the horizon. The project is built with the assumption that relocation will be necessary before 2030. In other words, impermanence isn’t a risk. It’s the design brief.
“Destination-making becomes the survival strategy.”
Cold winters are a shared challenge for both Manchester and Copenhagen. Uninsulated industrial spaces don’t care about your community ambitions. Tunnelarena responds by shifting programming seasonally: basketball thrives in the warmer months, while winter becomes a stage for activities that tolerate the cold better, like roller skating, biathlon shooting and pickleball. Dirt Factory is taking the container logic even further in its next iteration, moving from a warehouse to an open land plot in Manchester’s Wythenshawe area with a longer redevelopment horizon as apartments planned in about five years. There, the structure itself becomes modular: shipping containers combined with large canopies spanning up to 18 meters to create weatherproof, flexible, but still chilly spaces. The bet is that movement creates warmth and that users will accept the climate if the experience is worth it.
If you strip both stories down to their fundamentals, they converge on five truths about activating empty spaces. Permissions are rarely straightforward and legal complexity can swallow momentum. Timing is everything, because the clock is always ticking in the background of a redevelopment plan. Commercial viability isn’t optional, even social projects need a functioning engine. Recruitment stability is harder when the end date is known. And exit strategy must be planned early, because the move is not a failure; it’s part of the model.
But the opportunity side is just as compelling. Activating an empty building can reduce antisocial behavior, increase footfall and shift a neglected area into something that feels watched, used and valued. Landlords can benefit too, often more than they expect with less security cost, fewer repairs and sometimes even a reputational boost for enabling something visibly good. Temporary projects often unlock commercial advantages like rent-free periods, because owners know the value of having a place alive rather than abandoned. And for operators, meanwhile use can be the ultimate proof of concept: a real-world lab that shows what works before scaling.
Tunnelarena’s operational model adds another crucial layer: community ownership. Access is free for users, but the project is sustained through a blend of corporate foundation funding, public grants and low rent from the city. Staffing costs are reduced because the community helps run the place like cleaning, opening and closing. Actually it's caring for the arena like it’s theirs. It’s not just cost-saving, it’s culture-building. People protect what they feel they belong to.
Both speakers also pointed to a bigger shift happening across Europe: the rise of networks that help cities learn faster, fail smarter and replicate what works. The European Sports and Wellbeing Alliance is one example of that connective tissue, bringing together cities and partners to exchange knowledge on how sport, participation, facilities and public space activation can align. That matters because property activation is still fragmented, too many isolated experiments, too few shared playbooks. Meanwhile use improves when it’s treated like a discipline, not a lucky accident.
In the end, these projects aren’t really about bikes or basketball, containers or concrete slabs. They’re about a new urban instinct: refusing to let emptiness be the default setting. A vacant building is not just a gap in the skyline, it’s a gap in social infrastructure. Dirt Factory and Tunnelarena show what happens when you treat that gap as an invitation. You don’t wait for the perfect permanent solution. You build something meaningful now, design it to move later and leave behind something that lasts longer than the lease: proof that cities can change shape without losing their soul.
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