Sunoco to move HQ out of Center City

Sunoco Inc. will relocate its corporate headquarters to the suburbs in a blow to Center City, which has witnessed other companies move their offices out of Philadelphia.

Sunoco will move to Ellis Preserve in Newtown Square, Pa., according to various sources familiar with the matter. It will occupy more than 200,000 square feet. Sunoco officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Sunoco is currently located in Mellon Bank Center at 1735 Market St. and has shrunk its space in that office tower. The company’s decision to move creates another dent in Mellon Bank, which will see FMC Corp. vacate 250,000 square feet and saw other firms cut back on their occupancy. Mellon Bank totals 54 stories and 1.3 million square feet and is owned by CommonWealth REIT.

In 2004, Sunoco received public subsidies from the city and state to stay in 221,000 square feet at Mellon Bank Center. It had jumped from 10 Penn Center, where it had been in 378,000 square feet beginning in 1992. At the time, it moved from Radnor, Pa.

(Sunoco’s long-gone development arm at the time, Radnor Corp., left a legacy of real estate developments throughout the region. It built 10 Penn Center and back in the day, the Radnor Corporate Center where it had been based.)

Not long after Sunoco got those public funds, it shrank. Beginning in 2009, it decided to explore subleasing its Mellon Bank Center space to new tenants as it redefined its business and no longer needed so much room.

Divisions were sold and layoffs ensued. In one deal, Braskem, a Brazilian chemical company, bought Sunoco’s polypropylene subsidiary in 2010 and took 22,600 square feet of the Sunoco office space at Mellon Bank. Braskem is a fast-growing company and has continued to grow its presence in Mellon Bank.

A shell of what it once was, Sunoco reportedly occupies roughly 60,000 square feet of its original space at Mellon.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal