By CLAYTON PARK

Fremont is the neighborhood that likes to call itself the "Center of the Universe," but it may soon be known as something else as well: the global headquarters for Getty Images.

The company, the largest visual content provider in the world, announced on March 15 plans to move its corporate headquarters from London to Seattle. Then on March 24, Getty issued a second press release announcing the signing of a lease agreement to occupy 72,000 square feet of office space at the Quadrant Lake Union Center.

Getty currently has 240 employees in downtown Seattle, which will move to Fremont by late fall, according to the company's March 24th announcement. But the company - which employs 1,350 workers worldwide, including 690 in North America - is expected to ultimately bring many more of its employees to the area. Its top brass, including CEO Jonathan D. Klein and chief financial officer Christopher Roling, have already announced plans to move to Seattle.

While the company didn't indicate in its March 24th press release whether it plans to make the Quadrant Lake Union Center its future headquarters site, it seems unlikely that it would take such a large space and then choose to locate its headquarters elsewhere. On the otherhand, it would probably need to occupy more than the 72,000 square feet it has agreed to lease in Fremont.

Fortunately for them, it just so happens that the Quadrant Lake Union Center's developer, the Quadrant Corp., is planning to build three more buildings on the site and has, in fact, been on the hunt to land another major tenant, following Starwave Corp.'s apparent decision to back out of a previous agreement to lease two of the soon-to-be-built new buildings.

Getty's recently announced lease agreement actually consists of two separate transactions: a sublease of 66,000 square feet space in the Plaza Building (701 North 34th) from Adobe Systems, which wants to consolidate its workforce in the Waterfront Building (801 North 34th). The other deal is a direct lease of 6,000 square feet in the Plaza Building from Bedford Property Investors, the company that owns the Quadrant Lake Union Center's existing buildings, but not the three yet-to-be-constructed buildings that Quadrant Corp. is planning to add.

Jamie Shanks, property coordinator for Bedford, said her understanding is that Getty is planning to use the Plaza Building to house a call center (that will be operated on a "24-7" basis), as well as a large data center. She added that Getty plans to initially bring 350 people, who could arrive as soon as this summer.

Shanks said the March 15th announcement ruffled feathers among Adobe officials because it gave the impression that the maker of Adobe Pagemaker and other popular software titles was downsizing its operations in Fremont. Not so, says Shanks, who said that the space Adobe is subleasing to Getty was largely unoccupied space that it was holding on to for potential expansion.

Suzie Burke, whose company, the Fremont Dock Co., owns the land that the Quadrant Lake Union Center sits on, expressed excitement in the news that Getty is coming to Fremont. "It's going to be a boon for local business folks" as well as the overall community, she said. "Just imagine the Getty folks working with B.F. Day (the public elementary school in Fremont), the UW and Seattle Pacific University. The creative juices will flow!"

Burke said the arrival of Getty, like Adobe, is likely to have a minimal impact on the Fremont neighborhood in terms of creating additional traffic congestion, as both are companies with many employees that already reside in the North End. "Did you know that with 550 employees, Adobe is using just over 100 parking spaces?" Burke pointed out.

Shanks said Getty is in talks with Quadrant Corp. about possibly leasing the yet-to-be-built Lakeview Building, which could then be used as Getty's headquarters. No deal regarding the Lakeview Building has been inked as of yet, but "Quadrant really wants to make this deal," Shanks said.

Getty has indicated that it wants to complete the move of its headquarters operations to Seattle by the end of 1999.

One potential hitch to any plan Getty Images might have to make the Quadrant Lake Union Center its future headquarters would be if Quadrant were unable to complete the Lakeview Building in time to satisfy Getty's needs.

Getty explained in its March 15 announcement that its decision to move its headquarters to Seattle was largely prompted by its recognition that half of its $185 million in 1998 revenue was generated in the U.S. It was also attracted to the area because of the abundance of high-tech firms here, including leading online retailers such as Amazon.com.

It should also be noted that the Seattle area is also home to one of Getty's leading competitors: Corbis Corp., the Bellevue-based company owned by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.

"We recognize that as we drive our business further online, it is increasingly essential for our corporate headquarters to be in the same location as our technolgoy arm, Getty Technology Group, which is based in Seattle," said Getty CEO Jonathan Klein in a statement issued March 15. "Seattle also provides a more fertile environment for the kind of technology talent that we need to attract in order to maintain our leadership in the visual content e-commerce space."

Getty Images may be best known locally for its PhotoDisc brand, the leading provider of royalty-free stock photography and electronic delivery. Getty's other top brands include: Tony Stone Images (contemporary stock photography); Allsport (sports photography); Hulton Getty (one of the two largest privately-owned collections of archival photography in the world); Liaison Agency (a leading North American news and reportage brand), and Energy Film Library (stock film footage).