Who was Dennis Ray Gerwing? A look at the ‘person of interest’ in Calvert case

This story originally was published in The Island Packet on March 12, 2008.

Dennis Ray Gerwing’s business career on Hilton Head Island goes back to the 1980s.

In August 1985, he was named head of the finance and administration division of Ginn Holdings Corp., then the island’s largest resort and development company. Ginn Holdings, led by developer Bobby Ginn, was the company resulting from a leveraged buyout that combined the old Sea Pines Co. and the Hilton Head Co. Gerwing had been vice president and controller for the Sea Pines Co.

The newly formed company controlled developer operations in the Sea Pines, Shipyard, Wexford, Port Royal and Indigo Run communities.

But Ginn Holdings unraveled quickly. The company was sold in March 1986, a year after the Ginn purchase, and its name changed to Hilton Head Holdings Corp. Nine months later, it was in bankruptcy. The Hilton Head Holdings bankruptcy was a $100 million affair, with about 2,000 unsecured creditors — many of them local businesses — that were owed about $10 million. The rest of the debt was held in mortgages on prime property in Hilton Head.

After the demise of Ginn Holdings, a company called The Club Group was formed by Mark King, who had been director of sports for Ginn Holdings. The Club Group was a golf and amenity management company.

Gerwing joined King at The Club Group by at least 1987, according to Island Packet stories. King is currently president of The Club Group and Gerwing was its chief financial officer.

In 1987, The Club Group was hired to manage Shipyard and Port Royal golf and tennis operations and the Harbour Town properties owned by Tennessee businessman Avron Fogelman.

In 1988, Fogelman and Prudential-Bache formed a partnership that owned the Harbour Town properties, which included the famous lighthouse and yacht basin. The Harbour Town Yacht Club was developed later and the marina’s boat slips were sold to individual owners. The partnership hired The Club Group to manage its Harbour Town holdings.

The Club Group worked for the Fogelman/Prudential-Bache partnership until the partnership sold its Harbour Town holdings in 2005.

In that sale, Atlanta businessman John Calvert purchased the marina operations, including boat slip rentals, a charter boat, water-sport business and fuel dock, and a vacation rental business managing 125 homes and villas.

William Goodwin, whose company, The Riverstone Group, had purchased Sea Pines Associates earlier that year, purchased Harbour House A, Harbour Town’s largest commercial building with 25 storefronts, including the Crazy Crab restaurant; Lighthouse Point, a two-story building next to the lighthouse that contains The Quarterdeck restaurant, Cafe Europa and the Harbour Master store. It also contains Camp Hilton Head A & B, two gazebo-style buildings leased to retail shops; the building near the Liberty Oak that now houses Harbourside Cafe and Harbour Town Ice Cream Shoppe; and common areas, including walkways, the lighthouse parking lot, the boardwalk pier and docks.

In recent years, Gerwing was in the news as spokesman for the South Island Dredging Association, a consortium of business and residential interests in Sea Pines, including Harbour Town Yacht Basin.

The group was fined nearly $500,000 in 2003 after state and federal officials determined that 75 percent of the muck dredged from the bottom of marinas and waterways in Sea Pines ended up in Calibogue Sound instead of in an offshore dump site where it was supposed to go.

The group reached a settlement last month that called for the dredging association to pay $50,000 and tightened permit requirements. The group plans to start another round of dredging by the end of the year.

This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 10:42 AM.