Business View Magazine | December 2020

374 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 that, through the red tape, we’re not moving the goal line at the last minute and that they come in here and they understand from A to Z what they have to do to get opened. When a city makes that process smooth and seamless, it makes their transition a lot smoother and it really incentivizes people to want to move and invest into the city.” To entice people and businesses further, Rahway recently developed several high-end apartment complexes, some with retail spaces at street level. The Mint is a 200-plus unit apartment complex with retail on the bottom that just opened their doors at the beginning of 2020. The Gramercy of Rahway is a new 42-unit boutique apartment complex on Cherry St., and REVA Rahway just opened behind City Hall – that is a 200-unit luxury rental apartment complex. Giacobbe is proud of the efforts that saw an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the downtown transformed. “The Brownstones is a unique project,” he enthuses. “The site was contaminated and for decades sat as an abandoned industrial building right on West Grand Avenue and Elizabeth Avenue, which is a main road that come into the city from Route 1&9. To be able to get a developer to remediate the contamination and put a brand new, beautiful structure on there was a huge victory for our City and our development efforts.” One of the City’s polished gems, the Union County Performing Arts Center, is a 1,300-seat facility where artists of many genres delight audiences. Originally constructed in 1928, it too was brought back from the rubble to become a cultural beacon. The building at one point was a triple X theatre, which was completely transformed into a stunning performing arts venue that draws people who may not have previously ventured into downtown Rahway. Union County College has a satellite site in Rahway that enables youth to follow their passion in performing arts. And the city is also home to a 200-seat boutique arts centre, Mayor, Raymond Giacobbe