Even if it means working until the age of 64, as long as the setting is pleasant. And what the Porte du Hainaut urban community (CAPH) in the North offers could encourage opponents of pension reform to reconsider their judgment. Indeed, to revive a castle owned by the city of Raismes, the CAPH has just launched a call for expressions of interest to entrepreneurs to set up economic and tourist activities there.
Located in Raismes, near Valenciennes, the castle of the Princess of Arenberg is a beautiful building built in 1829 by Ernest Arenberg, a former mine administrator. In addition to the castle itself, with an area of 1,952 m2, the estate includes a huge park of more than 1.5 hectares on the edge of the forest. A small pied-à-terre which served the Arenberg family as a hunting lodge until it was bought by the town of Raismes in 1952 to make it a holiday centre. Except that, for four years, the castle is no longer used and it begins to wither.
A call for applications open to all
However, the CAPH and the town of Raismes have no intention of letting the building fall into ruins and intend to find its place in the local tourism and leisure development scheme. The idea being to implement “a project capable of revealing this heritage by introducing new uses, adapted to the site and its characteristics”. “New uses” which could be “an exhibition space, training space, third place, tourism, an unusual and atypical accommodation site”, carried by all kinds of actors, public, private, associations, inhabitants…
Candidates are free to submit their project before June 9th. A maximum of five applications will be selected and the winner will be designated before the end of 2023. Then, it is up to the promoters of the winning project to carry out the interior fittings of the château, respecting the architecture of the building. The bulk of the work will be carried out by the CAPH, facelift, repair of the roof and bringing the levels up to ERP standards.