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Jay Nelson was standing outside the store he runs in downtown Milwaukee when one of his regular customers walked by on his daily walk.
“I’ve told people to come and buy even a bottle of wine,” he said, holding out his hand. “I hope that helps.”
Pulling her in for a hug, Nelson says she needs all the help she can get.
The nearly ten-year-old Downtown Market & Smoke Shop was among the many businesses shut down by tall metal fences for the 2024 Republican National Convention, a massive surge that shut down parts of downtown for more than a week. .
For small businesses like the Downtown Market, the RNC didn’t deliver a decisive victory, but stifled sales despite earlier promises to boost the economy.
“I want you to take all the money to Milwaukee, spend that week, and leave it in Milwaukee,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said two years ago at the RNC’s summer meeting where it was announced that the city will host the GOP’s national convention.
But Samir Saddique, owner of the Downtown Market and Avenue Liquor neighborhood, said the convention brought “a lot of nothing.” Traffic and sales took a nose dive shortly after the fence went up in front of the store. On Thursday, the final day of the RNC, liquor stores have made only 10% of their usual sales, he said.
“We’re barricaded away from the rest of the world,” Saddique said.
Claire Koenig, a spokeswoman for Visit Milwaukee, which promotes the city as a tourism destination, said the economic impact report will take three months to compile.
Across the Milwaukee River, which marks the eastern end of the RNC safe zone, only one seat was taken at the bar at Elwood’s Liquor & Tap during happy hour Wednesday, which is usually a busy night for the red bar near Fiserv. The forum where the main stage of the convention is located.
“Everyone was promised it would be a big money maker for the business,” said bar manager Sam Chung, 30. “So it’s weird to see how much it kills business for a lot of people outside the perimeter.”
Even the most loyal customers haven’t stopped this week, Chung said.
“They don’t even want to come down here because it’s obviously a mess to get here,” he said, adding that he thinks “a big part of it is that a lot of them remain Democrats.”
Milwaukee is the deepest blue city in Wisconsin, a key swing state.
Adam Buker, a 21-year-old barista in a coffee shop near one of the exits of the convention, which leads attendees to the open road, said that all week he has been playing music by queer artists as a protest.
But the doors remain open at Canary Coffee Bar.
“It’s 100% related to our location,” Buker said Thursday as he packed an espresso field for a cortado, with a Frank Ocean track playing in the background.
Although outside the safe zone, the cafe’s glass shop and buttery yellow pavement seats are not obstructed by fences like the liquor store and Saddique’s shop. RNC attendees also didn’t have to cross the river to get to the coffee shop, unlike Elwood.
After closing this week, Buker said he’s been throwing away cash tips at some of the struggling bars around the perimeter of the convention.
“From one service worker to another,” he said. “Spread the love.”
As Buker’s final shift during RNC week was wrapping up Thursday evening, there was a last-minute party outside Saddique’s store. Saddique and Nelson, the manager, hope the tacos and ice-cold green tea flowing from the orange cooler will bring customers to the shop that has been open for more than 20 years, surviving the recession and the global pandemic.
Debra Lampe-Revolinski, who has lived in the building adjacent to Saddique’s business for 15 years, said she pitched the idea for the party earlier in the week, when she realized the expected boost in business would not materialize for her friends.
He knew Saddique and Nelson were preparing for the RNC, after watching them work hard for weeks while renovating parts of the store, he said.
“Then there is just this deflation because the shops are blocked by high metal fences,” he said. “It was completely uninvited.”
As Trump took center stage Thursday to officially accept the GOP nomination, Lampe-Revolinski said the party, originally geared toward business, had instead turned into a celebration of its week’s survival.
“If anything, this week strengthens the small community on this block to support local businesses,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed from Madison, Wisconsin.
