Outside the RNC, Milwaukee’s small businesses and their regular customers tried to salvage a slow week

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Jay Nelson was standing outside the convenience store he manages in downtown Milwaukee when one of his regular customers stopped by on her daily walk through the neighborhood.

“I’ve been telling people to come and buy even a bottle of wine,” she said, stretching out 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 many businesses closed off by tall metal fences for the 2024 Republican National Convention, a massive area that shut down parts of downtown for more than a week.

For small businesses like Downtown Market, the RNC did not deliver a decisive victory, but it did hurt 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 Republican National Convention.

But Samir Saddique, owner of the Downtown Market and the nearby Avenue Liquor, said the convention brought “a whole lot of nothing.” Traffic and sales plummeted soon after the fencing went up in front of the stores. By Thursday, the last day of the RNC, the liquor store had made only 10 percent of its usual sales, he said.

“We are isolated from the rest of the world,” Saddique said.

Claire Koenig, a spokeswoman for Visit Milwaukee, which promotes the city as a tourist destination, said economic impact reports would likely take three months to compile.

Across the Milwaukee River, which marked the eastern edge of the Republican National Convention’s security zone, only one seat was occupied at the bar inside Elwood’s Liquor & Tap during happy hour on Wednesday, which is usually a busy night for the red-booth bar near Fiserv Forum, where the convention’s main stage was set up.

“Everyone was promised that this would be a big moneymaker for the business,” said bar manager Sam Chung, 30. “So it’s weird to see how much it’s actually killed a lot of people’s businesses outside the perimeter.”

Even his most loyal customers haven’t been there this week, Chung said.

“They don’t even want to come here because it’s obviously a mess to come here,” she said, adding that she thought “a big part of it is that a lot of our regulars are Democrats.”

Milwaukee is the bluest city in Wisconsin, a key swing state.

Adam Buker, a 21-year-old barista at a coffee shop near one of the convention’s exits that leads attendees to an open street, said that all week he had been playing music by queer artists as his own protest.

But the door to the Canary Coffee Bar kept opening.

“It’s 100 percent about where we’re located,” Buker said Thursday as he prepared espresso grounds for a cortado, with a Frank Ocean track playing in the background.

Although it was outside the safe zone, the cafe’s glass facade and buttery yellow sidewalk seating were not obstructed by fencing like Saddique’s liquor and convenience stores. RNC attendees also did not have to cross the river to get to the cafe, unlike Elwood’s.

After this week’s shutdown, Buker said he was spending his tips at some of the struggling bars around the convention perimeter.

“From one service worker to another,” he said. “Spread the love.”

As Buker’s final shift during RNC week was coming to a close on Thursday night, a last-minute party outside Saddique’s convenience store was underway. Saddique and Nelson, the manager, hoped that catered tacos and iced green tea flowing from orange coolers would bring customers to the 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 years, said she pitched the idea for the party earlier in the week when she realized the expected increase in business wasn’t materializing for her friends.

She knew Saddique and Nelson had put a lot of effort into preparing for the Republican National Convention, having seen them work hard for weeks as they renovated parts of the stores, she said.

“And then there was just this deflation because the stores were blocked off by these tall metal fences,” she said. “It was so uninviting.”

As Trump took center stage on Thursday to formally accept the Republican Party nomination, Lampe-Revolinski said the party, which was initially intended to attract business, had turned into a celebration of surviving the week.

“If anything, this week has strengthened our little community on this block to support their local businesses,” she said.

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Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed from Madison, Wisconsin.