On Friday, February 27, the New York State Gaming Facility Location Board voted in favour of recommending a new Request For Applications for the state’s Finger Lakes/Southern Tier region, although, the board’s chairman, Kevin Law, stated that there is no guarantee that the board will ultimately accept any of the new applications that it receives.
"We wouldn't recommend a license unless we saw something better than what we were previously presented with," Law was quoted as saying.
The location board’s Friday decision was coupled with a 785-page report, which can be accessed by clicking here.
The Gaming Facility Location Board had initially announced this past December that the destination resorts that would be considered were the Montreign Resort Casino in the Catskills/Hudson Valley Region, Rivers Casino and Resort at Mohawk Harbor in the Capital Region, and Lago Resort and Casino in the Eastern Southern Tier/Finger Lakes Region.
The board’s December decision irked Tioga Downs’ and Vernon Downs’ operator Jeff Gural, who quickly responded by saying that he thought the board’s decision “screwed the people who live in the Southern Tier.” At the time, Gural also said that he thought that “the Southern Tier just got wiped out economically" due to the decision.
Then, in mid January, the location board announced that it had unanimously approved a request by Governor Andrew Cuomo to re-open the bidding process for a fourth casino gaming licence specifically for the Southern Tier region of the state
(With files from the Albany Business Review and the New York State Gaming Facility Location Board)