UPDATE: The SPD, announcing that it was targeting the site as a “chronic nuisance,” denied a permit for a planned rave last weekend. Rauf subsequently sent out an e-mail to neighbors saying he would “stop leasing the Citadel to rave promoters.” 

Quick: What are the hot spots in town for all-night music raves? SoDo, home of Club Motor? Belltown, where the kids party at King Cat Theater? And what about the Rainier Valley’s Othello neighborhood? Not on your list? Well, apparently it should be.

On weekend nights, as many as 2,000 kids from Everett to Tacoma have been descending on the intersection across from the Othello light-rail station, where an old bowling alley has been turned into a club called The Citadel. And it’s driving the neighbors crazy.

The Southeast Crime Prevention Council sent a stream of e-mails last week to city officials complaining about “loud, thumping, base [sic]-intensive music,” drinking, drug use, and otherwise unruly behavior.

“You drive by and kids are vomiting,” council president Pat Murakami tells Seattle Weekly. She says ravers have barged into local churches demanding to use the bathroom. On one occasion, a kid banged on the door of a private residence and said he had just been maced, according to Murakami. When the owner refused to the let the guy in, he and his friends started ripping the siding off the house.

In March, the Seattle Police Department arrested five people and seized 8,400 Ecstasy pills after concluding what it called a “large-scale narcotics investigation” that stemmed from drug-dealing outside The Citadel.

“You get 2,000-something people together and, yes, there are things that happen—arrests—offsite,” says the building’s owner, Steve Rauf. But he insists that he and the promoter which has been putting on the raves, Phase 3 Events, have done everything they can to accommodate neighbors. They’ve turned the music down, hired security guards, and made sure trash is picked up after each event within a one-block radius of the club, according to Rauf.

Rauf adds that he didn’t intend to use the building as a rave club when he bought it in 2007. With light rail in development, he planned to develop a multistory apartment building on the property. That’s just what he’s done with another parcel located across the street, now a 351-unit apartment complex called The Station at Othello Park. With that completed, he says he still plans to develop the Citadel site—eventually.

In the meantime, he says he’s got to pay $48,000 a year in taxes on the property, and rave promoters—for all the talk of light rail spurring development in the Rainier Valley—seem to have the greatest interest in the space. (He’s also just about to open an “international market” in the parking lot outside.)

And perhaps he’s got a way to spin Othello as the new Belltown, famously home to both raucous nightclubs and irate neighbors. Says the website for The Station at Othello Park: “Live in Seattle’s most authentic, global neighborhood that’s as vibrant and artistic as the people who call it home.”