MILWAUKEE (AP) — Jay Nelson was standing outside the convenience store he owns in downtown Milwaukee when one of his regular customers walked by on his daily stroll through the neighborhood.
“I'm asking people to just buy me a bottle of wine,” she said, spreading her arms out, “and hope that helps.”
As he held her, Nelson said he needed all the help he could get.
The business he's run for nearly a decade, Downtown Market & Smoke Shop, is one of many businesses that have been cordoned off with tall metal fences for the 2024 Republican National Convention, a sprawling space that has shut down part of the city's downtown for more than a week.
For small businesses like Downtown Market, the Republican National Convention did not bring a decisive victory, but rather hindered sales despite early promises of an economic boost.
“I want you to take all your money to Milwaukee, spend it during the week and leave it in Milwaukee,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said two years ago at the Republican National Convention's summer meeting, when it was announced that the convention would be held in Milwaukee.
But Samir Sadik, owner of Downtown Market and the adjacent Avenue Liquor Store, said the convention “brought nothing to us.” As soon as the fence went up in front of his store, traffic and sales plummeted. By Thursday, the final day of the Republican National Convention, the liquor store was doing just 10% of its usual sales, Sadik said.
“We are isolated from the world,” Sadiq said.
Claire Koenig, a spokeswoman for Visit Milwaukee, which promotes Milwaukee as a tourist destination, said the economic impact report will likely take three months to complete.
Across the Milwaukee River, marking the eastern edge of the Republican National Convention safe zone, there was just one seat filled at the bar inside Elwood's Liquor & Tap during happy hour on a Wednesday night, a reliably packed night at the red-booth bar near Fiserv Forum, where the convention's main stage is located.
“Everyone was promising this would be a big boon for businesses,” said bar manager Sam Chan, 30. “So it's strange to see how much business has actually been hurt for a lot of people outside the border.”
Chong said even his most loyal customers didn't stop by the store this week.
“They don't want to come here because it's obviously a hassle to get here,” she said, adding, “A big part of that is because a lot of our patrons are Democrats.”
Milwaukee is the most Democratic city in Wisconsin, a key battleground state.
Adam Bakker, a 21-year-old barista who works at a coffee shop near the convention exit that leads participants onto a wide street, said he had been playing music by queer artists all week as part of the protests.
But the doors of Canary Coffee Bar remained open.
“It has 100 percent to do with our location,” Booker said Thursday, packing espresso powder for a cortado with Frank Ocean tunes playing in the background.
Though it was outside the safety zone, the cafe's glass storefront and buttery yellow sidewalk seating were not blocked off by a fence like Sadiq's liquor store and convenience store, and RNC attendees did not have to cross the river to get to the coffee shop, as they did at Elwood's.
After the closure this week, Booker said he was spending cash tips at struggling bars around the convention center.
“Service worker to service worker,” he said. “Spread the love.”
As the final shift of Republican National Convention week was wrapping up on Thursday evening, a last-minute party was just getting started outside Sadik's convenience store. Sadik and Nelson, the store manager, were hoping catered tacos and ice-cold green tea flowing from an orange cooler would draw customers to the establishment that has been in business for more than 20 years, weathering a recession and a global pandemic.
Debra Lampe Levorinski, who has lived in the building next door to Sadik's business for 15 of those years, said she proposed the idea for the party earlier this week after realizing her friends' business wasn't growing as expected.
She said she had watched Sadik and Nelson work hard for weeks renovating parts of the store and knew they had put in a lot of effort in preparation for the Republican National Convention.
“And then there was this deflationary situation because the stores were closed off with those tall metal fences,” she said. “It was a very unattractive place.”
Lampe Levorinski said that by the time Trump took center stage on Thursday to formally accept the Republican nomination, what started as a party to attract business had turned into a celebration of surviving the week.
“I would say this week has really strengthened our little community on the block in supporting our local businesses,” she said.
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Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed from Madison, Wisconsin.
