This was supposed to be Milwaukee’s big year, a year unlike any other in the city’s history.
Consider what could have been for Milwaukee in 2020:
In June, the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the best record in the NBA and are led by reigning league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, could have won their first championship since 1971. The eyes of the national and international sports world would have been on Milwaukee and Fiserv Forum. Downtown could have been the site of the biggest celebration it has seen in decades.
But the NBA season was suspended in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now is set to resume with 22 teams, including the Bucks, playing their games at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. If the Bucks win a championship, we will only be able to watch from afar.
In July, Milwaukee would have again been in the national and international spotlight as host of the Democratic National Convention. The DNC was expected to attract 50,000 visitors and make an economic impact on the region of $200 million. In addition to the main event at Fiserv Forum, DNC-related events were to be held all over town.
But due to COVID-19 the DNC was first moved to August, and then was dramatically scaled down to a mostly virtual event with few attendees expected to come to Milwaukee.
In addition to the economic impact from the events, the Bucks’ possible NBA Finals appearance and the DNC were game-changing opportunities for Milwaukee to tell its story to the world and showcase itself as a revitalized city and a world-class place to live, work and play. But COVID-19 has changed those plans dramatically and robbed Milwaukee of those opportunities.
COVID-19 has altered many other local plans this year.
In September, the Ryder Cup was scheduled to be played at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan County. It was recently postponed to 2021. The biennial men’s golf competition between American and European teams will bring international attention to Wisconsin’s growing status as home to some of America’s greatest golf courses. The event is expected to attract 50,000 visitors and an economic impact of $135 million to the region. Hopefully it goes off without a hitch, next year.
[caption id="attachment_508510" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
Credit: Tom Barrett - Unsplash.com[/caption]
Other notable events planned in Milwaukee this year included the USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships in August, which was expected to bring 13,000 visitors and a $6 million economic impact. The triathlon was canceled for 2020, but Milwaukee will still get to host the event in 2021 and 2022.
In addition to those special events, Milwaukee’s big annual events that bring the city and region to life each year, including Summerfest and the Wisconsin State Fair, have all been canceled.
Milwaukee was also expecting its best passenger cruise season ever this year. As many as 17 vessels were expected to bring more than 4,000 tourists to Milwaukee from June to October, but they are not sailing this year.
The Milwaukee Brewers season is set to finally begin, but without spectators and with fewer games.
Nothing has gone as planned for Milwaukee’s big year, which instead has brought us one devastation after another.
The Milwaukee community was shocked in late February when an employee at the Molson Coors brewery, one of the city’s most iconic businesses in its most iconic industry, shot and killed five employees and himself.
Then in March, the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the United States and much of the country’s economy was shut down. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers issued a “Safer at Home” order that lasted from March 25 until it was struck down by the state Supreme Court on May 13.
“Safer at Home” and other similar orders were an attempt the slow the spread of the coronavirus. At press time COVID-19 has caused more than 126,000 deaths in the United States, including 796 in Wisconsin. More than 31,000 people in Wisconsin have tested positive for the virus.
Most of the state’s economy has reopened since mid-May, but many businesses are operating at limited capacity to maintain social distancing and keep customers and employees safe. Some companies still have a large percentage of their employees working from home.
The social distancing measures enacted to fight COVID-19 stopped the economy in its tracks. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate jumped from 3.1% in March to 13.6% in April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The National Bureau of Economic Research says the expansion of the U.S. economy that began in June of 2009 at the end of the Great Recession peaked in February of this year. The expansion lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of U.S. business cycles dating back to 1854. The previous record was held by the business expansion that lasted for 120 months from March 1991 to March 2001.
Then, after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, protesters across the country have marched in the streets decrying systemic racism and police brutality. Protests have been ongoing in Milwaukee since the weekend after Floyd’s death. They have been mostly peaceful, but the first weekend in particular included numerous incidents of looting and destruction that damaged dozens of businesses in Milwaukee.
[caption id="attachment_486715" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
An aerial view of Fiserv Forum and its new rooftop sign. Credit: Jon Elliott of MKE Drones LLC[/caption]
So, what was supposed to be Milwaukee’s big year is in shambles. The local and national economy is in a severe downtown. After flattening the COVID-19 curve, cases in Wisconsin and several other states are significantly on the rise. At the same time, many Americans are demanding change to address longstanding racial inequality in our society.
Where do we go from here? How does Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin collectively pick itself up and move forward?
For starters, the worst of the economic damage could be over. Hopefully.
[caption id="attachment_508507" align="alignright" width="300"]
Michael Sadoff[/caption]
“This may be one of the shortest recessions on record and could be over already,” said Michael Sadoff, owner of Glendale-based Sadoff Investment Management LLC. “We have experienced a horrific recession but it is likely that the worst is behind us and there is growth ahead.”
The U.S. economy lost 21.2 million jobs in March and April and the nation’s unemployment rate skyrocketed from 3.5% in February to 14.7% in April as much of the American economy was shut down in an attempt to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“The speed and intensity of the current recession has been as unprecedented as the public health crisis ensuing COVID-19,” said Avik Chakrabarti, an associate professor of economics at UW-Milwaukee.
As stay-at-home requirements have been dropped and much of the economy restarted, the labor market has made significant improvement. The U.S. economy added 7.3 million jobs in May and June and the unemployment rate improved to 11.1% in June.
[caption id="attachment_501054" align="alignright" width="300"]
Avik Chakrabarti[/caption]
But the nation’s economy still has a long way to go to recover. It is nearly 14 million jobs short of its labor count in February.
“While the recession may be over, the negative effects from this will last for many years,” Sadoff said. “This recession is deep. … Many will not get their job back even when the economy is fully reopened in the future. … It will take a long time for the economy to get back to levels from before the virus.”
Sadoff said the economic recovery won’t be V-shaped, as some hope. He envisions a recovery with a chart that looks like a backwards J, with a dramatic drop and then a short U-shaped upturn, followed by gradual improvement.
Chakrabarti expects a U-shaped recovery, but says a W-shaped path is also possible.
“A U-shaped recovery appears to match the most likely outlook with the American economy rocking in a cradle getting ready to swing high once the public health crisis is resolved,” he said.
“A W-shaped recovery, resembling the experience of the economy when it had fallen into a couple of back-to-back recessions in 1980 and 1981 following the oil and inflation crises of 1979, cannot be ruled out if the anticipated path of expansion is truncated by the emergence of any other seemingly unanticipated crisis once COVID-19 is tamed,” he added.
If 2020 has taught us anything, an unanticipated crisis could be just around the corner.
But the biggest concern for the economy could be a dramatic second surge of COVID-19 that forces additional social distancing lockdowns that shut down large parts of the economy.
This summer several states, including Wisconsin, have seen a surge in COVID-19 cases.
But the good news is the number of new deaths per day in the state from the virus has been in decline since late May. And the number of people in southeastern Wisconsin that are hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen from 340 in mid-April to 154 in early July, according to the state Department of Health Services.
What remains to be seen is if the summertime spread of COVID-19 leads to another economic shutdown in the fall.
[caption id="attachment_508511" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
Source: Tom Barrett - Unsplash.com[/caption]
“A recovery will become increasingly elusive if the wave of COVID-19 resurges,” Chakrabarti said. “A second wave of COVID-19 can pull the American economy down into a depression and force an eventual recovery to be L-shaped with the economy struggling to approach pre-recession levels of growth.”
And what about Milwaukee? How does the city move forward after its lost year?
The shift of the DNC to a mostly virtual event is the biggest lost opportunity for Milwaukee this year. Some, including Pabst Theater Group executive director Gary Witt say local officials should push the DNC to return to Milwaukee with a full convention in 2024.
Other events are likely to be rescheduled. If the Ryder Cup is postponed it will likely be played at Whistling Straits in 2021 instead.
[caption id="attachment_508508" align="alignright" width="300"]
Peggy Williams-Smith[/caption]
VISIT Milwaukee president and chief executive officer Peggy Williams-Smith said several events that were planned in Milwaukee this year are being rescheduled.
“Our sales team has been busy re-booking conventions that have been canceled or postponed, which means 2021 and 2022 are busier that we had first predicted,” she said.
Port Milwaukee director Adam Schlicht sees COVID-19 as only a temporary disruptor of Port Milwaukee’s momentum in efforts to attract cruise ship traffic. Eleven cruise ship visits have already been booked for 2021, and international cruise giant Viking hasn’t wavered on its plans to enter the Great Lakes market in 2022.
“This is not the year we wanted it to be for the city but there are may ways for us to move ahead and recover,” Williams-Smith said.
The second half of 2020 will likely be filled with conflict as a deeply divided country heads toward a presidential election.
[caption id="attachment_508506" align="alignright" width="300"]
David Crowley[/caption]
And Black Lives Matter protests are continuing in Milwaukee and throughout the country, mostly peacefully, but in some cases they have turned violent and involved destruction to statues and monuments, including two on the Capitol Square in Madison.
Hopefully the focus on civil rights will bring about positive change in Milwaukee, which has long struggled with racial inequality and segregation.
“It’s important in this critical time in Milwaukee and in our country that we continue to challenge ourselves and our institutions to commit to structural racial equity work,” said David Crowley, who earlier this year became the first African American to be elected Milwaukee County Executive. “The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a long line of health disparities caused by deeply rooted racial inequities. At Milwaukee County, we have committed ourselves to redistributing power and changing our institutional policies and practices. For us at Milwaukee County racial equity isn’t a slogan, it is the way we now approach business and our path forward.”
