Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
Welcoming A New Editor-In-Chief For the Milwaukee Business Journal
It's time to check in with the Milwaukee Business Journal and joining us today is the new editor-in-chief Timothy Gibbons. And first of all, Tim, this is our first time together. Welcome. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. I know and we're so excited to have you here in Milwaukee. And let's talk about some of the stories that you've been covering this week, a big one. And that's a possible sales tax in Waukesha County. Yeah, I am new, so don't press me too much on the details. But clearly, this is a huge thing for the businesses, for the residents there. Waukesha County is one of the very few in the state that does not have a sales tax. And their budgets are hurting, frankly. And they have to figure out what to do. So the sales tax is not the only thing they're looking at. Wheel tax is possible. They could try to raise their property tax levy. But the sales tax seems to be from the people that we're talking to, kind of the idea that people are coalescing around. Well, you see so much retail growth in the area of Waukesha County. I would imagine they're looking at that as sort of a goal line in some ways. In some ways, what I found interesting, and this is, I mean, very that's obviously very much an area that does not want to raise taxes. They're proud of their low taxes. Everybody we talked to there is allergic to raising taxes. But they realize that if you're going to have the services that people are moving there for, you got to pay for them. One of the issues is that the sales tax would actually raise too much money. They don't. Wait, wait, how can you raise too much money? Because they have a budget deficit of do not hold me on this figure. I want to say it was five or six million and the tax would raise basically 10 times that. So then you have a question. Can you divvy that up among the cities in a different way? Can you have a sales tax for a certain amount of time? Can they petition the state to let them raise the sales tax but not by the amount that they would otherwise have to? So they're looking at different options. One of the benefits, obviously, is a sales tax does not just hit residents. You talk about the growing retail in the area. Restaurants are booming in Waukesha County. It's the first place for a number of chain restaurants that have moved to the greater Milwaukee area. They've located there. It's not just Waukesha County residents who are eating in those restaurants. There are people from other outlying areas, people from the city of Milwaukee. So a sales tax would bring money in from outsiders. And obviously, if you're an insider, you much prefer having that money come from people who are not you in addition to the people who live there. Well, you mentioned restaurants and that's another booming area in Waukesha County, not only the chain restaurants, but you have a lot of local chefs, restaurateurs, who even if they've got a place in the city, they're opening a second place in Waukesha County. Right, exactly. So it's been the spot the number of national chains have landed BJ's restaurant, Pratilla's Buffalo Wild Wings. They came to the state for the first time and Waukesha is where they wanted to be. What's interesting when you talk to both real estate leaders and political leaders there is they are focused on trying to keep the Waukesha County vibe, which does include chain restaurants, but also has those local culinary arts being portrayed, whether it's people from Waukesha or people from Milwaukee expanding their sort of things. So it's kind of neat to hear them focusing on keeping what makes Waukesha special, keeping that in place. And of course, even those franchises, they're national chains, but the people who own those are oftentimes local as well. So sometimes I think when we talk about restaurants, we draw this line between the national ones and the local ones, but from a business standpoint, you know, these are entrepreneurs, these are local entrepreneurs in the same sort of way. Well, Marcus theaters has a huge presence, obviously, in Waukesha County, as well as other parts of Wisconsin and actually the whole country, but they're going to do something a little bit different. And I'm excited about those. So they've rolled this out in the second quarter, which was frankly not a great quarter for them. But if you are part of their membership club, you can get free popcorn when you go to the movies on Tuesdays. Just to be clear, do not show up demanding free popcorn, you know, on a Friday night. Go on a Tuesday. Exactly. No, the movie business is a rough one. It's a tough thing to make money in that. Now, this year, past couple months have actually been good in terms of movies. It's fickle me for when gangbusters, I think that the highest, no, inside out was the highest grossing animated movie ever. The Deadpool and Wolverine movie is the highest grossing or rated movie ever. So there are some bright spots in it, but you know, over the pandemic, a lot of people learn to enjoy the comfort of sitting on their couch, watching a movie, you can pause it. There's nobody talking. Home can be a fun place to watch a movie, but Marcus is hoping that free popcorn makes a theater a fun place to watch a movie. And Chris popcorn, that's their big markup. Yes, it is. But so what's interesting is Tuesdays, you, there's a ticket deal for everybody with an extra buck off, if you remember, and their average concession revenue per ticket actually went up by a couple percentage points. And as you said, I mean, the movie business is a weird one where we think of going to the movies as going to the movies. But if you're in the business, you think of it as selling cups of popcorn. Exactly. All right, we're going to turn to something that's not as upbeat. And you know, we've seen it obviously in the stock market. Some manufacturing plants are starting to cut back. Yeah, exactly. So Rockwell Automation is the one that they came out with their quota learnings this week. And as part of that, they trimmed their guidance for the year. In their case, it's because manufacturing customers are putting off some of the investment that they would otherwise make in their factories. It can be a tough time right now for manufacturers. The issue of demand dropping has economists concerned kind of overall of where the economy is going. We saw the same thing last year from a logistics standpoint, where you had a lot of retailers who had inventory overhangs and just they had so much inventory, they didn't need more inventory. And that impacts the people who make whatever the inventory is, as well as the people who ship it. So now it's manufacturing where a little bit of a slowdown, a little bit of less capital going into these major projects. And obviously, a company like Rockwell, that ends up hitting their bottom line. All right, finally, let's turn to something really fun. This is all over the world. And it's coming to Dosa. It is a troll, which is somehow, it's like, a troll. It described what a troll is. I don't know. They're not just looking at celebrities online. No, no, no. So I should have, I should correct myself. It's a giant troll. So this is a sculpture that is made by an artist called Thomas Danbow, who has built these things around the world. It's made out of recycled material. And it is a giant troll. Public art, it is designed, walrittosis, basically hoping that it attracts visitors, kind of gives the city of vibe as a creative artsy sort of place. And frankly, if you look at the pictures, it just looks kind of cool. Oh, yeah. And it's big. It's huge. It's huge. I mean, it is absurdly huge. The picture that we have on our website, if you go to The Milwaukee Business Journal.com, you can see a picture of the artist standing next to one of these. And I mean, it's six or seven times the size of a human being. So it's going to be a stunning thing. When we wrote the story, I was trying to picture somebody who doesn't know it's there. So if you're a visitor, you want to go and see it, that's going to be cool. But can you imagine you're driving down the street, turn the corner, and particularly in the winter, skies a little overcast, covered with snow, somebody's going to, you know, freak out a little bit. I think you're right. But I love the name Tosa Troll. Yes. That's going to be a thing for sure. They'll probably do t-shirts and who knows what else. I would definitely buy a t-shirt. Tim Givens, a pleasure to have you here. We'll talk to you again soon. Awesome. Thanks for having me.