Nickels asks state to suspend nightclub’s license
Mayor Greg Nickels asked the state Friday to suspend the liquor license of a downtown nightclub after a report in October of guns inside the club.
In a letter to the State Liquor Board, Nickels noted a number of previous times police had responded to incidents near the club, Ximaica. The letter cited offenses ranging from drug dealing to weapons incidents to excessive noise.
What exactly happened on Oct. 21 is in dispute.
The mayor said in his letter that a fight broke out near Ximaica, at 2224 2nd Ave., and that two people got three handguns and chased a man into the club. It is illegal to carry a gun into a nightclub, but police said no one from Ximaica called to report the incident.
Club owner Elisabeth Sieg said her staff did not call police because they had been informed that a nearby club had already placed the call, and that officers were on the way.
Sieg’s account of what happened that night differed from what the mayor described in his letter.
She said the fight started inside the club, and that only one man left to get a gun from his car. That man then charged past security staff, she said, waving the gun. Staffers calmed the man down and coaxed him out the front door.
As for previous police reports, Sieg said those incidents took place outside her club and thus were beyond her control. “I feel like I’ve been targeted,” said Sieg, echoing a complaint made by other nightclubs Nickels has pursued.
“There’s a lot of crazy riffraff in Belltown, and the police try to pin them down as our clientele.”
The mayor’s letter asks the state for an emergency suspension of Ximaica’s liquor license, saying the club endangers public safety.
“This was a really brazen incident,” said Marty McOmber, Nickels’ spokesman. “It really speaks to the nature of violence that’s happening in some of these clubs.”
The Nickels administration has focused on safety at nightclubs since violence broke out last year inside or around clubs in Queen Anne and around Pioneer Square.
But the mayor’s push to license the clubs with the city failed recently, when the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance that he described as meaningless. He vetoed the ordinance, which delayed any licensing for a year, and allowed the council to change its mind at that point.
Because nightclubs are not licensed by the city, the only way the mayor can punish clubs that act outside the law is to ask the state to suspend or revoke their liquor licenses.
Cara Solomon: 206-464-2024 or csolomon@seattletimes.com