NY regulators approve Tioga Downs casino

And while it was the fourth to get a license, the Tioga Downs casino will almost certainly be the first to open since the racino building is already in place and has been retrofitted and expanded to hold a full-service casino.

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It feels great, Tioga Downs developer Jeff Gural said after members of the state Gaming Commission approved the license. He added that It will really be a shot in the arm, for the struggling Southern Tier region where it is located

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Approval of the casino represents a turnaround from the original plan nearly two years ago when members of a special Location Board set up by the Gaming Commission said they believed three, rather than four casinos would work best in order to prevent the "cannibalization" of a limited gaming market.

That approach, however, provoked an outcry from Gural, a New York City real estate developer who a decade ago began building up Tioga Downs.

Joining the protests were numerous Southern Tier politicians, including the now-deceased Binghamton-area Sen. Tom Libous. They successfully convinced Gov. Andrew Cuomo to urge the Gaming Commission and its Location Board to revisit the issue and eventually open another competition for a fourth casino. Gural was the only applicant in that round of bidding for a license.

The state law approved by voters in a referendum originally allowed for four casinos upstate.

Construction on the project, which had earlier received a "yes" vote by the Location Board, has already started, Gural said. Once the Location Board gave its OK there was little doubt that Gural would be granted a license, absent some unforeseen development.

Gural said he will now try to speed up what is usually a two-month long time frame before which all the regulations allowing the casino go into effect. If that happens he said he can quickly get equipment for table games in place and have a mid-November opening. If not, he said he would likely wait until January.

Three other upstate casinos and resorts are being built from the ground up. They are: Rivers in Schenectady (to open in February), del Lago in Tyre, between Syracuse and Rochester, and Montreign near Monticello in the Catskills.