By CLAYTON PARK

King County Superior Court Judge Dean Lum has thrown out a neighborhood group's lawsuit seeking to block Quadrant Corp.'s plans to construct three new buildings at its Quadrant Lake Union Center property in Fremont.

But while Lum's Dec. 14 decision to dismiss the suit filed by the Fremont Neighborhood Council comes as good news for Quadrant, its plans to start construction are still on hold - and may stay that way for a while.

That's because Quadrant has yet to receive confirmation from its anticipated key tenant, Starwave Corp., even though the Bellevue-based Internet company signed a letter of intent to occupy two of Quadrant's three proposed multi-story buildings in Fremont earlier this year.

The tentative agreement called for Starwave to occupy two buildings Quadrant plans to build west of the Fremont Bridge, at the south end of Evanston. The "North" and "South" buildings would offer a combined total of 165,000-square-feet of office space.

Quadrant is also looking for tenants for its other proposed project, The Lakeview Building, which would be built east of the bridge, next to the two buildings that house Adobe Systems. The 100,000-square-foot Lakeview Building would offer a mix of office space and street-level retail shops along North 34th Street, as well as three levels of parking.

"I can assure you that there's been no commitment made" by Starwave to lease from Quadrant, or the other way around, said Quadrant spokeswoman Barbara Chilcote.

Chilcote, who serves as project manager for the Lake Union Center, added that "letters of intent are typically not binding."

When asked if she has heard anything from Starwave recently, Chilcote said: "I don't know what they're doing."

One factor that might have something to do with Starwave's apparent case of indecision is its two-fold change in owners since signing its letter of intent with Quadrant. This past spring, Starwave founder Paul Allen, the Microsoft billionaire, sold the company to Disney, which in turn sold it to Infoseek a month later.

"The last I heard, they (Starwave) had to wait for the transaction to close," said Chilcote.

That's not to say that Quadrant is content to just wait around for Starwave to make up its mind. "We're continuing to actively market the property," said Chilcote. "We expect to proceed (with construction) real soon."

Quadrant's ability to line up tenants was certainly given a boost by Judge Lum's Dec. 14 decision to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Fremont Neighborhood Council in August.

The FNC, a neighborhood group primarily made up of local residents, claimed that the permits for Quadrant's three proposed new buildings in Fremont had expired and were thus no longer valid. Quadrant's master use permit was issued in early 1992 and its building permits were issued in October 1993.

According to a statement issued by the FNC prior to Lum's ruling, "under the law, permits are only allowed to last for five years, except for periods of time that the permit activity was not actually pursued due to the pendency of reasonably related administrative appeals or litigation."

That's exactly what happened, according to Quadrant and the city's Department of Construction and Land Use, who argued that litigation brought by Quadrant to force Burlington Northern to help pay for clean-up costs of soil contamination of the former railroad right-of-way on the site caused the developer "not to pursue" construction of the buildings.

Now that the lawsuit has been decided, Chilcote says it's back to Quadrant's chief business at hand: continuing its search for tenants.

"For us, there's really no change," she said. "We always thought we had valid permits and the courts agreed. We'll start building when we see fit."

The Jet City Maven called FNC officials for comment, but had yet to receive a return call as of press time.