Refinery

Whipsawed by volatile oil prices, bogged down by debt and unable to sell off its two modest refineries, Crown Central Petroleum Corp. had no choice but to put the entire company on the auction block, industry analysts said yesterday. But it won't be easy because Crown's refineries are too small and need tens of millions of dollars in upgrades, the analysts said. Further, many of the company's 315 retail outlets need a face lift. Compounding a difficult situation is the possibility of war with Iraq, which could spark volatility in the oil market and turn potential suitors into corporate tire-kickers.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp., the owner of refineries and gas stations whose Baltimore roots stretch back nearly 100 years, has hired an investment banker to help it sell the company - as a whole, or piece by piece. Crown has hired New York-based Park Avenue Equity Management LLC to help sell its two Texas gasoline refineries, its 10 product terminals and its 315 retail locations. "While this was a hard decision, we believe that, in view of the difficult environment faced by independent refiners and retailers during the past year and a half, it is the right thing to do," Frank B. Rosenberg, Crown's president and chief executive officer and a great-grandson of the company's founder, said yesterday in a news release.

Eleanor M. Burke, a lab worker at Domino Sugar and a volunteer at Bon Secours Hospital, died Thursday at St. Agnes HealthCare after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at her home in Catonsville. She was 90. The youngest surviving daughter of Polish immigrants, she was born Eleanor Schultz in her parents' home in Canton and had lived in southwest Baltimore County for most of her life. She dropped out of Catonsville High School to support her family during the Depression, taking a job in 1930 at the Domino Sugar refinery in Locust Point.

Alfonso Fanjul Jr. was barely out of college in the fall of 1959 when he and several attorneys sat nervously at a conference table in his company's headquarters waiting for Fidel Castro's men to arrive. The soldiers, who had overthrown dictator Fulgencio Batista, were coming to announce the fate of the sugar business that Fanjul's great-grandfather had started in Cuba more than a century earlier. Even though private property was being confiscated all around him and his family had fled the country, Fanjul believed he could save the business.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. has hired a financial adviser and broker to explore sale of its two Texas refineries and its terminal assets, a move that would make it solely a gasoline retailer, the company said yesterday. The Baltimore-based oil refiner and retail operator, which became a private company in March, has been considering the move for more than year. In May 2000, another financial adviser laid out two scenarios for the company: infuse more money into upgrading its refineries, or sell them.

Two politically connected brothers who fled the Castro regime and later built a sugar empire in Florida agreed yesterday to purchase the Domino Sugar company for $180 million. Alfonso and J. Pepe Fanjul visited with workers at the Baltimore plant on Key Highway yesterday and said they plan no layoffs or management changes. They intend to keep both the Domino brand name and, to the relief of local preservationists, the 120-foot red neon sign that has illuminated Baltimore's harbor from atop the plant for five decades.

FOR 50 YEARS, the 120-by-70-foot "Domino Sugars" sign has been an icon that has defined Baltimore. When you see its 650 neon tubes aglow over South Baltimore, you know you're home, hon. The Domino plant, which employs about 500 people on a 20-acre site, is the last reminder that Baltimore once had a dozen refineries processing imported sugar cane. This relic's future is now being determined in board rooms in London and Florida, where the sale of the whole Domino operation is being negotiated.

Pushing the limits of Baltimore's harbor gentrification, businessman Edwin F. Hale Sr. said yesterday that he plans to develop a $100 million office tower, hotel and retail complex in the heart of Canton's industrial waterfront. The neighborhood has become a residential and commercial market, and other projects are planned, but this proposal at Boston and Clinton streets would mark the farthest a developer has ventured on the east side of the harbor. The gritty landscape, complete with hulking oil tanks and the Fort McHenry Tunnel toll plaza, did not put off Hale, chairman of First Mariner Bank, owner of the Baltimore Blast National Professional Soccer League team and head of trucking and transportation companies.

After a nearly five-year lockout and a vitriolic war of words, union members from Crown Central Petroleum Corp.'s refinery in Texas approved a new contract with the Baltimore-based company yesterday. The Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers Union International (PACE) did not release precise vote totals, but Joe Drexler, PACE's director of special projects, said the contract was approved by "a very healthy margin." The approval came nearly three months after the workers rejected an earlier Crown contract 3-to-1.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. has reached a tentative agreement - the second in three months - with union workers at its oil refinery in Pasadena, Texas, potentially ending an almost five-year lockout. Crown and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) previously announced a tentative agreement Oct. 11, but the measure was rejected by local bargaining unit members a week later. The latest agreement, announced yesterday, also is subject to a ratification vote by members of Local 4-227.