Business View Magazine | December 2020

371 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 RAHWAY , NEW JERSEY we have over 1,400 affordable housing units, but you wouldn’t be able to tell because nobody walks around as if they are better than anybody else.” Rahway’s centralized location in the Northeast corridor of New Jersey puts it at a distinct advantage when it comes to attracting people and enterprise. A train trip from the Rahway station down to the New Jersey Coast Line, to the state capitol of Trenton or into Manhattan takes only 35 to 40 minutes. One of the city’s largest employers, Merck & Co., which began operations in Rahway early in the 20th Century and stayed as its corporate headquarters until the early 1980s, recently announced it will move its world headquarters back into Rahway after an almost 40-year absence. Research and development and manufactural operations continued in Rahway after Merck moved, but the workforce was drastically cut due to the closure of its administrative arm. According to Giacobbe, “The growth and throughout the South and into Europe. In March 1858, Rahway was incorporated as a city and in 1860 an Act of the Legislature brought the entire city, which had been split between Middlesex County and Union County, into Union County. Today, Rahway is a city filled with diversity; a place where people can hang their hats and still enjoy the arts and culture ordinarily offered in larger metropolitan areas. “What makes our city so special and so great is diversity,” explains Mayor Giacobbe. “Rahway’s demographic makeup is one-third African American, Caucasian and Hispanic. We embrace multiple cultures here and you see it when we have events. This is as a place where suburbia and city life meet. We have a great stock of single-family homes throughout the city but we also have a wonderful downtown that has shops and services and apartment buildings. Besides the City being demographically diverse, we are also economically diverse. We have houses that range up into the $500,000 to $600,000 range, and