Out with the raves. In with the live chickens. That’s the latest news from Rainier Valley’s Othello neighborhood, where a loud, boozy rave club called The Citadel had neighbors dashing off angry letters to the city. A couple weeks ago, police declared the place a “chronic nuisance,” prompting landlord Steve Rauf to call off the raves. In short order, an “international market” has taken root on the spot.Promoter Mateo Monda explains that he has been working with Rauf for months on the idea. The so-called Othello Public Market was originally consigned to the parking lot in front of the building, which lies across from the Othello light-rail station. In part, that’s because the weekend raves were taking up the space–and generating bad blood with the city, which refused to give Rauf a permanent occupancy permit. Monda says he saw his opportunity when Mayor Mike McGinn came to the neighborhood one morning for a town hall meeting. “I grabbed the mayor and brought him out here for lunch,” Monda says. A few vendors were operating outside, including Sweet Bones Barbecue, which dished up McGinn’s meal. Monda says the city has now told him it will approve a 45-day permit, which will allow him to open the doors on Friday. The promoter– a Capitol Hill resident who spent 15 years as a restaurateur in Mexico before moving to Seattle for a second act– has big plans. Unlike farmers’ markets, which typically open once a week in any given neighborhood, this one is to run from Wednesday through Sunday. It is to have a farmers market component, with produce and flowers. But it will also offer arts and crafts, clothing, food–and anything else immigrants from around the world might want to sell. “There’s a guy who sells live chickens around the corner. I’m trying to convince him to come into the market,” Monda says. To get buy-in from immigrant vendors, he says he’s keeping rents as low as possible, from $12 to $40 a day. He reasons that will allow vendors to keep prices more affordable than at typical farmers’ markets, which are out of the price range of most Othello residents. A farmers market where you don’t have to pay $4 a peach and can get exotic goods to boot–who wouldn’t love that idea? “I hope it does well,” says Pat Murakami, president of the Southeast Crime Prevention Council, which had led the charge against The Citadel. Monda admits, though, that his last venture– a recurring Latin American street-fare market in Burien–was a “miserable failure.” Vendors would stay home whenever it rained or the World Cup was on, problems he hopes to solve by having a roof over this market and a greater diversity of participants. Whether customers will come is another question, one that might say a lot about whether this neighborhood can bring viable businesses without the promise of an illicit party scene. Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.