MILWAUKEE (AP) — Jay Nelson was outside the convenience store he runs in downtown Milwaukee when one of his regular customers stopped by on his daily stroll through the neighborhood.
“I’ve been telling people to come and buy at least one bottle of wine,” she said, stretching her arms. “I hope it helps.”
Pulling her into a hug, Nelson said they needed all the help they could get.
The store he has run for nearly a decade, Downtown Market & Smoke Shop, was among the many businesses enclosed by tall metal fences for the 2024 season. Republican National Conventiona sprawling area that closed parts of the city center for more than a week.
For small businesses like Downtown Market, the RNC did not deliver a decisive victory, instead hurting sales, despite earlier promises that it would bring an economic boost.
“I want you to take all your money to Milwaukee, spend it that week and leave it in Milwaukee,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said two years ago at the RNC summer meeting where it was announced that the city would host the convention national Republican Party.
But Samir Saddique, owner of Downtown Market and nearby Avenue Liquor, said the convention didn’t bring “much of anything.” Traffic and sales plummeted soon after the fence was erected in front of the stores. day, the liquor store did just 10% of its normal sales, he said.
“We are isolated from the rest of the world,” Saddique said.
Claire Koenig, spokeswoman for Visit Milwaukee, which promotes the city as a tourist destination, said economic impact reports will likely take three months to compile.
Across the Milwaukee River, which marked the eastern edge of the RNC safe zone, only one seat was occupied at the bar inside Elwood’s Liquor & Tap during Wednesday happy hour, which is usually a fairly busy night for the bar with red booth near Fiserv Forum where the main convention stage was installed.
“Everyone was promised that this would be a huge source of revenue for businesses,” said bar manager Sam Chung, 30. “So it’s strange to see how much it has actually killed a lot of people’s businesses outside the perimeter.”
Even the most loyal customers haven’t stopped by this week, Chung said.
“They don’t even want to come here because it’s obviously a mess to get here,” she said, adding that she thinks “a big part of it is that a lot of our regular customers are Democrats.”
Milwaukee is the deepest blue city in Wisconsina key oscillating state.
Adam Buker, a 21-year-old barista at a coffee shop near one of the convention’s exits, which takes attendees to an open street, said he had been playing music by queer artists all week as his own protest.
Even so, the door to Canary Coffee Bar kept opening.
“It’s 100 percent to do with our location,” Buker said Thursday as he packed espresso for a caldo, with a Frank Ocean track playing in the background.
Although it was outside the safe zone, the cafe’s glass storefront and yellow sidewalk seats were not obstructed by the fence like Saddique’s liquor and convenience stores. RNC attendees also didn’t have to cross the river to get to the coffee shop, unlike Elwood’s.
After closing this week, Buker said he was spending his tips at some of the struggling bars around the convention perimeter.
“From one service provider to another,” he said. “Share the love”.
As Buker’s final shift during RNC week was coming to an end Thursday night, a last-minute party outside Saddique’s convenience store was underway. Saddique and Nelson, the manager, hoped serving tacos and iced green tea pouring from orange coolers would bring customers to stores that have been open for more than 20 years, surviving a recession and a global pandemic.
Debra Lampe-Revolinski, who has lived in the building adjacent to Saddique’s business for 15 of those years, said she pitched the party idea earlier in the week when she realized the expected increase in business wasn’t materializing for her friends.
She knew Saddique and Nelson put a lot of effort into preparing for the RNC, having seen them work hard for weeks as they remodeled parts of the stores, she said.
“And then there was just this deflation because the stores were blocked off by those tall metal fences,” she said. “It was so uninviting.”
When Trump took center stage Thursday to formally accept the Republican Party’s nomination, Lampe-Revolinski said the party, originally intended to bring in business, instead turned into a celebration of surviving the week.
“This week has actually strengthened our little community on this block to support local businesses,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed from Madison, Wisconsin.
