Dennis Saxman made a name for himself when he fought a planned six-story building on the block that once housed the Cha Cha Lounge, got a proposed development mired in court leaving an eye-sore of a gravel pit.Thanks to the empty pit, Capitol Hillers are pissed at Saxman, but he lives near the site and fighting unwanted development in his neighborhood is certainly his right. What makes less sense is why Saxman is helping six people fight development at Sound Transit stations in neighborhoods where he doesn’t live.On Jan. 29, six people from three different south side neighborhoods, simultaneously filed nearly identical appeals of a city Department of Planning and Development study released earlier that month finding that putting bigger and taller buildings near the Beacon Hill, Othello, and Mt. Baker Sound Transit stations would not have a significant impact on those neighborhoods. While Saxman’s name isn’t on any of the appeals, he’s been actively pushing them. So why is a guy who doesn’t live in the south end fighting development at train stations there?Saxman, a member of the city’s Neighborhood Planning Advisory Committee, says he believes the city agreed to developers’ requests to have regulations at the stations changed, then held poorly advertised community hearings that were little more than a chance to convince people to support projects the city was already planning to approve. “From the beginning the city ran the process as a top-down process despite the objections of a number of members of the Neighborhood Plan Advisory Committee.”Longtime neighborhood activists Pat Murakami, Frederica Merrell, and Ronald Momoda signed the three appeals, which argue that the Planning Department’s evaluation was rushed and arbitrary.As to how Saxman got involved with the pissed off southenders, “oh, you know, we have secret NIMBY conventions,” he laughs. In truth, they all met at various community meetings, and after launching his own fight against development in the city, resulting in that lovely bed of gravel, Saxman says he was sympathetic to their plight and offered to help.He introduced them to Toby Thaler, another Advisory Committee member and attorney who feels that since the early days of Greg Nickels “neighborhood planning gradually unraveled.” Thaler, who lives in Fremont, created the appeals, hence the reason for their uniformity.Hearings on the three appeals are scheduled to begin April 7, says planning department spokesperson Bryan Stevens. But the battle for public opinion has already begun. One Beacon Hill Blog contributor argued that the appeals will set the process for getting actual building done near the stations back months. El Centro de la Raza wants to develop land it owns near the Beacon Hill station and asked that a Seattle hearing examiner dismiss the appeals immediately.Merrell wrote her own post on the Beacon Hill Blog, coyly offering no details saying: “An appeal is kind of like a poker game. One important strategy for winning the game is not showing your hand.”Apparently another key to winning is getting Saxman involved, that is if empty lots are your definition of victory.