Very soon, a New York state commission will decide whether to approve yet another casino in upstate New York. The catch – there’s only applicant for the gaming license, Jeffrey Gural. At 73, Gural has deep connections in the worlds of real estate and politics, and he is determined to expand opportunities to gambling.
In his prime, Jeff Gural focused on buying and selling buildings. But as he got older, his interests changed and he sold his real estate company, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (though he still remains its chairman) and devoted himself to two causes: Horse races of the literal kind, as he began buying horses and racetracks. And horse races of the political kind.
“I’m a liberal Democrat,” he said.
These two worlds intersect more often than you might expect.
Last year, Gural applied for a New York State casino license to add table games at Tioga Downs, an upstate racetrack he owns about a half an hour west of Binghamton. His bid was rejected.
Gural took it personally, sharing his anger with the press. Over the years, he and his wife have donated to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s campaigns.
The Governor didn’t wait long to respond. Ten days later, he told the Gaming Commission to consider adding one more upstate casino. Gural is now the only applicant for that spot.
“I’ve always supported him, I voted for him, and hopefully I’ll get this casino license and we can patch things up,” Gural said.
At the same time, Gural is pushing to add a casino in New Jersey’s Meadowlands Racetrack, which he leased in 2011. He says it will be expensive to advertise for a ballot initiative during a presidential election next year, so he may team up with another businessman who has his plans of his own for a casino in northern New Jersey.
“I’ll probably reach out to to Paul Fireman who has a site in Jersey City he’d like to put a casino on. And try to get together and hire some political strategists and see what we could do,” Gural said.
In spite of all this, Gural is not much of a bettor. In fact, he has a longstanding distaste for casinos that dates back to a cross-country road trip he took with a friend after college. In Las Vegas, Gural saw inebriated “cowboys” being parted with their money.
“Cocktail waitresses would cozy up to them and I kind of thought...it looked like they were taking advantage of these guys to a certain extent, so from that it just never appealed to me,” Gural said.
So for him, casinos are, in part, about raising money to support horse racing.
This summer he’s been spending time on two upstate horse farms which he owns.
“I’m not mucking out stalls and I’m not grooming them but whenever I come up to one of my farms I stop in the supermarket and one or two big bags of carrots and I’ll give 'em out over the course of a couple days," he said. "They all know me when they see me, they run over, the know they’re gonna get a carrot."
Editor’s note: This story has been revised for purposes of clarity. An earlier version suggested that Gural’s interest in casinos is only for raising money to support horse racing. In fact, he has said publicly that the proposed casino at Tioga Downs would benefit the economy and create jobs in the Southern Tier of New York.