New York OKs Full Casino for Tioga Downs

A facility that began as a Quarter Horse racetrack two generations ago was granted a license Aug. 30 by New York regulators to become the fourth full-scale upstate casino.

Tioga Downs, a Standardbred track west of Binghamton in the struggling Southern Tier region of New York, will be permitted to install slot machines and table games under a plan approved Aug. 30 by the New York State Gaming Commission. The track currently has video lottery terminals, as do all the other tracks in the state.

Jeff Gural, the majority owner of Tioga Downs who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars helping promote the 2013 referendum that legalized commercial casinos in New York, already began construction last year on the facility in anticipation of regulatory approval.

The last to be licensed, though the furthest along in its relatively small project compared with the other approved casinos, Tioga Downs can'tt bring in expanded forms of gambling until the NYSGC completes a process to regulate the new commercial ventures. The various regulations are not expected to be given final approval until November.

Tioga Downs began as a Quarter Horse track in 1975 but closed just three years later under financial strain. It reopened as a harness track with VLTs in 2006.

Racetrack-based casinos in New York, under the terms of a 2001 law, were allowed to have VLTs, which are gaming devices run through a central computer at the state Lottery Division. The commercial casinos permitted under a 2013 referendum allows licensees to install real slot machines, with stand-alone random number generators, as well as table games.

The 2013 referendum changed the state constitution to permit up to seven new casinos on top of the nine racetrack-based casinos already in operation and a half dozen Native American-owned casinos in upstate New York.

Gural owns both Tioga Downs and Vernon Downs, a harness track and VLT facility ocated between Utica and Syracuse. He also runs Meadowlands in New Jersey, where he is hoping voters this fall will legalize up to two new casinos to be located in the northern part of the state.

Gural lost out in the initial round of casino awards in late 2014; three licenses were awarded for locations in the southern Catskill Mountains, the Albany area, and a property along the New York Thruway between Syracuse and Rochester.

An angry backlash by politicians and residents in the Southern Tier prodded Gov. Andrew Cuomo to run a second round of casino bidding limited to plans from the Southern Tier. Gural won that process last October after he submitted what state officials called a larger project with “substantially” more equity invested.

The approved Tioga Downs project calls for a 33,300-square-foot gambling hall with 1,000 slot machines and 50 table games, along with a 161-room hotel, restaurants, and outdoor entertainment area. It was approved Tuesday by the NYSGC unanimously and without discussion.