Downtown Milwaukee is in for an especially jam-packed July next year, with several major events expected to bring visitors by the tens of thousands.
Of course, Brew City during the summertime is always busy with warm weather, a long lineup of festivals and many other things to do – from outdoor night markets to boating on Lake Michigan.
July is annually headlined by the tail end of Summerfest, followed by Bastille Days, the Milwaukee Air & Water Show and German Fest, but in 2024 two more large-scale events will join that list.
Most notably, the Republican National Convention, set for July 15-18. The four-day political circus – and its supporting cast of heavy police presence, designated protest zones and street closures – will draw more than 50,000 visitors and generate roughly $250 million in economic impact to the region. Organizers and local boosters have long touted the event as one that will “put Milwaukee on the map,” especially after the city missed out on the influx of dollars and media exposure from a mostly virtual Democratic National Convention in 2020.
The other big event is the Harley-Davidson Homecoming Festival, on July 25-28. Traditionally held as an anniversary celebration every five years, the Homecoming rally in Milwaukee will now be an annual event giving riders from across the globe reason to make a yearly trek to the motorcycle maker’s headquarters city.
Harley’s 2023 Homecoming Festival, marking its 120th anniversary, drew “record attendance” between the 80,000 people who saw concert headliners Green Day and Foo Fighters, 130,000 people who visited the Harley-Davidson Museum festival grounds and the 7,000 motorcycles that participated in the parade through downtown Milwaukee. Initial figures estimated the four-day festival would bring an estimated 200,000 Harley riders to the city from roughly 50 countries.
Logistics a key Factor
Sandwiched between the RNC and Harley’s Homecoming next year will be Northwestern Mutual’s annual meeting, July 20-23. The event has long stood as one of Milwaukee’s largest annual corporate conventions, this year drawing an estimated 12,000 attendees from across the country.
For the Milwaukee-based financial services company’s home office, putting on four days of seminars, networking events and evening entertainment – including a big-name headline show – is a mammoth undertaking. Add the element of working around a major political convention being held earlier the same week and things get a bit more complicated.
“As you’d imagine we’ve been in really close communication with the national committee that’s working on the 2024 RNC, and we’re really excited to be able to be gracious hosts again next summer,” said Tim Gerend, chief distribution officer at Northwestern Mutual. “We’ve got a lot of logistics to figure out … but we’re in the process of putting together a really good plan, and we’re going to look forward to welcoming back our field force for another phenomenal annual meeting in 2024.”
Dates for the 2024 Milwaukee Air & Water Show have not yet been confirmed but if the event sticks with its usual timeframe, it will likely be held the same weekend as NM’s annual meeting – as was the case this year. The show annually attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the city’s lakefront, typically with the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels or the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds as the featured performers.
German Fest, which annually takes place the last weekend of July at Henry Maier Festival Park, plans to take full advantage of the overlap with Harley’s 2024 Homecoming Festival, which is taking place a week later than this year’s event due to the RNC.
“I think it’ll be a good thing,” Deb Wolf, director of marketing for German Fest Milwaukee, said in July. “Logistically, parking might be a nightmare but hopefully now that we have a year to figure it out, it should work.”
Beyond the opportunity to boost attendance, German Fest is eyeing the potential for partnership.
“We actually have a few people on our board who work for Harley, so we’re hoping to do something together with them,” said Wolf.
While it’s worth highlighting July as what will be the peak of an unprecedented year for tourism activity in southeastern Wisconsin, VISIT Milwaukee president and chief executive officer Peggy Williams-Smith was quick to point out that “it starts well before July,” with a hopeful Bucks playoff run, followed by Pride Fest and Polish Fest in June.
After July, the fun continues with the 2024 Wisconsin State Fair scheduled for Aug. 1-11.
Convention center launch
May 16 will mark the grand opening of the newly expanded Baird Center (formerly known as the Wisconsin Center), following a $456 million project aimed at doubling the center’s convention space to accommodate multiple events at once.
“It allows us for the first time to host two groups at the same time, which is like hosting a (Northwestern Mutual annual meeting), but with two different groups. We’ve had small groups here together before but not large,” said Williams-Smith.
The irony is, while the rest of the city hums with activity, the Baird Center will be offline for all but a few days in July. That’s because the Wisconsin Center District campus is licensed to the Republican National Committee from July 2 to Aug. 2, with access to the Miller High Life Theater and Panther Arena starting June 17, said Marty Brooks, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Center District.
As one of the main venues for the RNC along with Fiserv Forum, which will house the convention floor and main stage, the Baird Center will most likely serve as the hub for the thousands of national and international media covering the event, said Brooks. Outside of convention week, the building will be utilized for the set-up, take down and support required to execute an event of that magnitude.
While having the building booked for four weeks only to have “a week’s worth of people” use it might seem like a missed opportunity for a newly expanded convention center, Brooks only sees the positives.
“To have an event that requires the convention center to be booked for four weeks is unbelievable,” said Brooks. “The tradeoff of not having a couple of events earlier in July is that we have the RNC that needs the entire convention center space to support their event that’s bringing 50,000 people into the market. There aren’t a lot of events that require that kind of support time, set-up time and bring that many people into the city. This is like the Super Bowl.”
Activity at the Baird Center will start to pick up speed soon after the RNC. As of July, there were already 26 larger-scale events on the books for the remainder of 2024. Among them is a trade show geared toward the professionals responsible for putting on such events. Connect Marketplace convenes roughly 1,400 meeting and event planners from across the country to discuss industry trends and mingle with potential clients. It’s also a huge marketing opportunity for the city hosting the event.
“It allows us, the city of Milwaukee, the opportunity to sell these 1,200 to 1,500 people on why their businesses should come here, whether it’s our building or Fiserv Forum or wherever, we want their business to come to Wisconsin,” said Brooks. “The RNC alone gives us a springboard to create awareness of what Milwaukee has to offer, now we have decision makers coming to our market and it’s going to be a feeding frenzy.”
