MILWAUKEE, WI — After months of speculation, it’s official: Milwaukee will be host to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Milwaukee beat out finalists Miami and Houston for the honor. DNC spokesman Brandon Galloway told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the official announcement will be made Monday at 3 p.m. CDT during a press conference.
According to media reports, hosting the convention here would cost up to $70 million to stage, with private donors raising the money.
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Watch Monday’s announcement live here:
Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum reportedly figured into the decision-making process of DNC officials.
The new multipurpose arena seats 17,500 for basketball and 18,000 for concerts. Construction on the new arena broke ground in June 2016 and opened in Aug. 2018. The arena cost $524 million to build, and is considered one of the premier NBA arenas and overall entertainment venues in the U.S.
“The Fiserv forum is the crown jewel of the recruitment pitch. We think it’s the best arena in the country,” said Alex Lasry, bid chair, Bucks Vice President in a FOX-TV report.
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POLITICO was the first to report that Milwaukee was the odds-on favorite to land the 2020 DNC, saying that DNC Chairman Tom Perez’s connections to Milwaukee and the Democratic Party’s need to win Wisconsin in 2020 after losing the state in 2016 were both big factors that pushed Milwaukee to the forefront of the minds of DNC decision-makers.
Earlier, WISN-TV had a reporter call around to area Milwaukee hotels. According to their report, the DNC was already in the process of reserving blocks of hotel rooms for the convention week – a sign at least, that the DNC is serious about Milwaukee.
The Convention will undoubtedly be a financial windfall for the Milwaukee metro area, which will host nearly 50,000 attendees in the event which runs from July 13 to July 16, 2020. According to reports, the Convention is expected to have a financial impact of between $200 million and $300 million throughout the state.
One major obstacle that came up during the final stages of the selection process was the Milwaukee metro area’s relatively small number of hotel rooms.
According to a Wisconsin Public Radio report, Downtown Milwaukee, where the convention would be held, has approximately 5,500 hotel rooms, and the surrounding metro area has 17,884 more. That figured is compared to 91,494 rooms in Houston and 57,282 rooms in Miami.
Yet Milwaukee also had some advantages when it came to weather and climate: when compared with venues in both Houston and Miami, Milwaukee is expected to be more comfortable from a day-to-day weather standpoint, while also being well out of harm’s way of any hurricanes or tropical storms.