Outside the RNC, small Milwaukee businesses and their regulars tried to salvage a sluggish week

Jay Nelson was standing outside the convenience store he manages in downtown Milwaukee when one of his regular customers walked by on her daily stroll around the neighborhood.

“I've been telling people to come and buy even just a bottle of wine,” she said, stretching out her arms. “I hope it helps.”

Pulling her in for a hug, Nelson said they needed all the help they could get.

The store he has managed for nearly a decade, Downtown Market & Smoke Shop, was among the many businesses sealed off by tall metal fencing for the 2024 Republican National Convention, a sprawling footprint that shut down portions of the city's downtown for more than a week.

For small businesses like Downtown Market, the RNC didn't deliver a decisive victory, instead hindering 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’s summer meeting where it was announced that the city would host the GOP's national convention.

But Samir Saddique, owner of Downtown Market and the neighboring Avenue Liquor, said the convention brought “a lot of nothing." Traffic and sales took a nose dive soon after the fencing went up in front of the stores. By Thursday, the RNC's final day, the liquor store had made just 10% of its usual sales, he said.

“We’re barricaded away from the rest of the world,” Saddique said.

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

Across the Milwaukee River, which marked the eastern edge of the RNC secure zone, just one seat was taken at the bar