Wisconsin's Weekend Morning News
Was the RNC Good for Milwaukee's Hotels?
It's time to check in with Teddy Nykall from the Milwaukee Business Journal. And Teddy, I know a lot of people still want to get out of town in time for that summer vacation, but they're not going to be happy with this news from Frontier. They're so friends here has already cut its direct flights from Milwaukee to Orlando, as well as Fort Myers, Florida. And later in August, they will also be cutting their rats to Philadelphia and Raleigh Durham. But I think it's important to note, Frontier is a relatively small air carrier from Milwaukee. They have only 3% of the market share out of Mitchell Airport. So obviously, if you're flights from Milwaukee, it's not great news. But there are many other carriers that have a larger percentage of the share in Milwaukee. And well, that's the good news of that story. So let's talk about something that took a lot of people by surprise this week. And that is George Oliver stepped down as Johnson Controls CEO. And I think it surprised a lot of people, didn't it? Yeah, so Johnson Controls is one of Wisconsin's largest publicly traded companies. They have thousands of employees in this state. And of course, their North American headquarters is in Glendale. So obviously, this affects a lot of people locally. He announced that he will be stepping down, but he will remain honest as CEO as the company searches for his replacement. So the company has hired a search firm that's conducting that now. And he'll stay in the role, at least for the time being. But yeah, he is planning to step down. I thought it was interesting in the article where it said that an activist investment firm had a conversation with them. What do they mean when they say an activist investment firm? Yeah, good question. So activist investors are usually investment firms who will buy up shares of the public companies and then kind of advocate for changes within those companies that they think will increase the value of the shares. So in this case, the investment firm is called Elliot Management. They recently bought a bunch of shares and jobs to control such that now they're one of the largest shareholders in the company. And so they have sway in terms of, you know, pushing the board to make certain decisions. And so they were in favor of this move. Hmm. Very interesting. Something else that was interesting is the RNC had quite an impact on local hotels. Yeah, we got some data on how local hotels fared during the RNC. And it was positive, we heard mixed reviews overall on the business impact of the RNC, you know, with some restaurants and bars, not happy about how much business they were getting. But in terms of hotels, there was positive news, both in terms of occupancy and nightly room rates. So hotels generally were more than 80% full up from around 70% normally. And the night before Trump was officially selected as the Republican nominee, downtown hotels were essentially fully booked. And then when you look at the room rates, you know, the average daily room rate in the area jumped by more than 150% to around $500 a night. So people were paying a lot more than normal for us to stay in these area hotels. $500 a night. That was the average roughly around that. Whoa. That's a lot of money. And I would imagine then too that the hotel concessions and restaurants and bars really did well too. You know, you would have to imagine. Yeah, I think, you know, what we heard anecdotally was that convention goers were kind of just staying near. They weren't venturing too far. So they were eating at restaurants within the security zone and, you know, likely also within those hotels as well. All right. Let's talk about UWM and their announcement about the Waukesha campus and what they're going to do with all that property. Yeah, this is a really interesting one because Waukesha County obviously is such a popular area in the region, but it's largely built out. There's not really a ton of additional lands to build on, but with the closure of UWM's Waukesha campus, it's set to close after the spring 2025 semester. This really represents an opportunity to kind of redevelop some land into new uses. So Waukesha County officials said they envisioned redeveloping it with housing and some potential commercial use. So they're still working through kind of what that will look like, but they're envisioning a mix of single family and apartments. So they want to kind of add some density in the area to help keep costs down. But this is 86 acres, so really it represents a big opportunity for Waukesha County. And speaking of property in and around Mount Pleasant, it looks like Microsoft is buying even more. Microsoft just continues to expand its holding in Racine County. You know, obviously this is an ongoing story we've been continuing to cover. They already own more than 1,300 acres in Mount Pleasant and the end of July. They purchased another nearly 200 acres north of where they already have land. So all indications point to they will be continuing to purchase even more land. And the company said it's in support of the data center campus that they're already underway with in Mount Pleasant. So they are not showing signs of slowing down. Do you have any idea what their total acreage land holding is right now? So they had around 1,300 acres in Mount Pleasant and then they just purchased another almost 200. Right around 1,500 acres is where they'd be at right now. That's a lot of acreage. Yeah. And just to kind of put that into perspective, the first phase of the data center that they're currently building is only on about 2 or 300 acres. So they have a lot more space to build additional data center facilities in Mount Pleasant there. A lot of jobs and a lot more people are going to need housing. I would think with that. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely demand for housing in Kenosha and Racine County. Before you go to work, I don't know about you, Teddy. I got to have a great cup of coffee. And this is good news if you'll live on the east side. Tell us about it. Yeah. So Valentine Coffee Roasters is one of Milwaukee's local coffee companies. They have two other locations, one here in Wauwatosa and one in the third ward. But they are planning their third location on Downer Avenue on the east side near the UWM campus. So it's slated to open this fall next to the UWM bookstore building recently became a game store. And then next door to that is where the Valentine Coffee will be going. We got to keep those college students caffeinated and awake in class, don't we? Exactly. Yeah. So fans of Valentine or students in that area can look forward to that this fall. Teddy Nickel, from the Milwaukee Business Journal, it's always so good to talk with you.