Recently, Amazon named Newark as one of the top finalists in the company’s HQ2 location search. To those familiar with the Brick City, this came as no surprise; Newark has long enjoyed a host of infrastructural and geographical advantages — it’s just 20 minutes from New York City– that have made it a growing business hub.

Amazon isn’t the only business looking to make moves in Newark. Other established, multinational companies have also turned to the city as a viable option for their corporate headquarters, including Audible Inc., an Amazon-owned company which employs 1,000 workers to produce and sell audio entertainment. Mars Wrigley Confectionary, the chocolate company behind M&M’s, recently announced that one of its U.S. headquarters will open in Newark by July of 2020, bringing with it about 500 new jobs to the city.

In December, Broadridge Financial Solutions, a fintech company that provides technical services to financial institutions moved 1,000 employees in December from Jersey City to 2 Gateway, a building in the heart of Newark. Standard Chartered Bank, a London-based institution, which provides financial products and services to corporations, is another company at 2 Gateway that recently signed a lease extension for 72,319-square-foot office space. The 2 Gateway building has also signed leases with other businesses across multiple industries in 2017, including one with award-winning architectural and design planning firm Minno & Wasko back in December. The list goes on.

The leasing velocity in the Newark submarket has more than doubled year-over-year and that’s because companies are now looking to Newark as a locale that isn’t just practical, but attractive for its executives and employees alike. The city’s downtown is just one stop away from New York City with commercial rent cost at a third of the price of what a company would pay if they were to operate in Manhattan. It’s also less expensive than Jersey City and Hoboken, and effectively just as close to NYC. Newark is quickly becoming an attractive destination for businesses throughout the region and beyond.

But unlike other busy urban centers coveted by new businesses, Newark has the space available for interested companies. In fact, 2 Gateway has an unheard of 290,000-square-feet available in their Class A building, perfect for any company looking for a large amount of space, and just one stop away from Midtown, Manhattan.

Not only is Newark emerging as an ideal location at the right price, but it is also uniquely positioned to handle all of the technological needs for companies, large and small, at an affordable cost. The city happens to sit directly above the fiber optic cable network that runs along the eastern seaboard, which allows companies to tap into the fastest internet speeds in the country at an extraordinarily competitive price point. The city took advantage of this network to create Newark Fiber, a program offering the highest-speed fiber for Newark buildings at the lowest cost in the region for comparable connections. 2 Gateway was the first building to tap into Newark Fiber, enabling C&K Properties to offer the connections a la carte to its tenants. This trendsetting nature isn’t foreign to 2 Gateway; in 2014, it became first building in New Jersey to become Wired Certified Platinum by WiredScore, indicating the highest rating for a building’s internet connectivity and technological infrastructure.

When it comes to location, cost and connectivity, Newark is in prime position to strengthen its standing as a regional business powerhouse, with or without Amazon.