PhillyDeals: Sunoco fading from Center City

Sunoco

is fading from Center City. Just four years into a 15-year lease, the company has asked Philadelphia office broker

David Binswanger

to find new tenants for its headquarters at Mellon Bank Center, 1735 Market St.

"We are exploring a number of opportunities to consolidate our office space and reduce our costs," Sunoco spokesman Thomas Golembeski told me.

With falling U.S. fuel demand and higher import (or foreign) oil costs, the refiner/retailer/chemical maker has been laying off workers at the 221,000-square-foot headquarters as it closes and sells operations in the field.

Sunoco has sold its Northeast home-fuel truck network, shut its Eagle Point refinery in Gloucester County, and frozen retiree benefits, with guidance from cost-cutters at McKinsey & Co.

By contrast, Sunoco is expanding its Midwest coke (steel-mill fuel) operations

and looking for a "partner" to help fund improvements at its original refinery site in Toledo, Ohio, chief executive Lynn L. Elsenhans told analysts in a conference call Nov. 5.

Sunoco also is talking to potential buyers for its chemical factories, including its Bridesburg plant and sites at

its Marcus Hook works. "We got bids in September," chief financial officer Brian P. MacDonald said in the conference call. "We're hopeful we'll have a decision by the end of the year."

Stantec

, an Edmonton, Alberta, firm that's been rolling up U.S. business consultants during the recession, has acquired

Granary Associates

, a Philadelphia project-management and hospital-design firm. Granary employs about 120, including 75 at its headquarters at 20th and Callowhill, with the rest in New York and Qatar. The companies wouldn't say what the Canadian firm paid.

"There's a lot of consolidation going on," Stantec chief operating officer Rich Allen told me. His company claimed $1.3 billion (U.S.) in sales last year and higher sales so far this year, but all the gain was from acquisitions, not internal growth, which slowed. Granary sales totaled about $30.5 million.

Granary was started in 1979 as a group within the former Mediq Inc. and had been independent since 1995. Granary has counted the University of Pennsylvania and Jefferson Hospital Systems in Philadelphia, Sloan Kettering and St. Vincent's in New York, and Robert Wood Johnson in New Jersey among its clients, plus hospitals in Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

"They're adding to our health-care business," Allen said. "There's not a lot of overlap. The plan is to integrate all" Granary employees.

Granary cochairman James W. Eastwood said the firm's project-management business has kept busy, but new hospital-design projects have been "slower" because of the recession and uncertainty over health-care reforms. He said Stantec approached Granary earlier this year about a combination. "It gives our younger people a great opportunity to grow this company from Philadelphia."

Separately, Stantec is combining 60 workers from two environmental services companies it acquired, Secor International's Exton office and Vollmer Associates' in Kennett Square, at a single West Chester site on Andrew Drive, said spokesman Jay Averill.

Secaucus-based

Goya Foods Inc.

, the Spanish-American/Caribbean distributor of pastele wraps, sofrito marinade, fideo noodles, chopped squid "in its own ink," and hundreds more specialties, is opening a 204,000-square-foot regional hub at 1 Industrial Park, Pedricktown, replacing its smaller, older center in West Deptford, said spokeswoman

Olga Luz-Tirado

.

"Consumer demand has been through the roof" in the metro Philadelphia and Washington markets and points between, which the center will serve, Luz told me.

The new center, one of 14 in Goya's international network, will start with about 100 workers. Plans are to hire a few dozen more, Luz said, with a planned 110,000-square-foot expansion within five years.

Goya, owned by descendants of immigrant founder Prudencio Unanue, won't say what it's spending on the plant. It officially opens today with music, politicians, raffles and Miss New Jersey.