Arche Group
This year, for the first time, guests met at the construction site, where an extraordinary revitalization of four historical objects in Silesia and Dąbrowa Basin is underway or will soon begin: the Zabrze and Bytom Combined Heat and Power Plants, the Donnersmarck Palace in Siemianowice Śląskie, and the former Renard power plant in Sosnowiec.
In Poland, there are over 80,000 immovable monuments registered in the register of monuments. Their protection is extremely important because they constitute a material testimony to history, culture, and national identity. These are non-renewable resources that, once destroyed, will disappear forever, depriving future generations of the possibility of ancestral heritage. For several decades, Arche Group has been a trend-setting leader in saving monuments and sustainably transforming them — to the benefit of local communities — into revitalized, tax-revenue-generating, multifunctional facilities with cultural and sports spaces.
— Monuments are our enormous national potential, which is difficult to even quantify in money, and which, abandoned and neglected, we lose irrevocably year after year. Currently, bad law, such overregulation, which in theory should prevent all pathologies, in practice only encourages them. There is a lack of trust in people, which leads to some regulating and others figuring out how to navigate within this law. There seems to be one law in Poland, but there are places where there is good energy, and places where there isn’t. It’s as if one were operating in a different country with a completely opposite interpretation and conflicting interests. This is absurd for honest entrepreneurs. More trust in investors would be beneficial, because we feel this mission very strongly. In fact, saved historical objects are a very positive energy, something that connects us; monuments build community. It is also our duty not to be indifferent to what our ancestors passed on to us, to pass it on to future generations. Arche is unusual in that we often enter non-obvious locations and objects that no one else is interested in. In the coming years, we intend to allocate over 5 billion PLN to this type of investment. It is important that we can transform abandoned, ruined objects into profitable tourism gems, also using the capital of small Polish investors. We already have over 2,000 of them, and they have invested approximately 1.2 billion PLN. This is our unique feature in the entire market of dispersed hotel shares and sustainable development of forgotten places on the map of Poland. I believe that social issues are also a role for business in the future. Polish companies, which had nothing 35 years ago, have come a long way and can look at the world more broadly and better appreciate the legacy for future generations — explains Władysław Grochowski, CEO of Arche.
About Arche
The company carried out its first investments in Warsaw and Siedlce, and for two decades has been building throughout Poland. Currently, Arche is the largest Polish hotel chain with domestic capital, bringing together over 2,000 investors owning a total of over 3,500 hotel rooms and apartments, as well as a residential developer. The company started its operations in 1991 and has built over 12,000 apartments and houses in its history, and recently launched its 24th property in its collection, Arche Metalowiec Muszyna, which will bring its total to approximately 4,800 rooms. For years, Arche Group has cared for monuments primarily out of a passion for saving decaying history, transforming forgotten objects into vibrant hotels, which constitutes their business model based on revitalization. And Arche’s CEO, Władysław Grochowski, emphasizes that monuments are an important element of identity that connects Poles and should not disappear. For nearly a quarter of a century, the company has given Poles the opportunity to earn in the commercial real estate sector through its proprietary Arche System, which goes far beyond the definitions of apart- and condohotels. Arche SA CEO Władysław Grochowski, together with his wife, through the Lena Grochowska Foundation, has also been conducting extensive activities for many years, integrating communities, activating socially excluded people, those with intellectual disabilities, and the most needy. For this, at the end of 2023, he received one of the most important awards in the world at a gala in Geneva — the prestigious Nansen Award, granted by the UN High Commissioner. And at the end of 2024, the Indian Mother Teresa of Calcutta Award.
