Strawberry Festival Parade welcomes Jeff Gural as Grand Marshal

Each year, the Strawberry Festival in Owego carries a different theme, and also honors community members through its selection of a Grand Marshal to serve in the parade. 

This year’s theme is “Strawberry Jamboree,” and Jeff Gural, owner of Tioga Downs Casino and Resort, will serve as the Grand Marshal for the annual parade, scheduled to step off in downtown Owego at 10 a.m. on June 16.

Gural was selected not only for his generosity, but also for the impact his efforts have had on the community with the build and then the expansion of Tioga Downs Casino and Resort in Nichols, N.Y. Because of these efforts, hundreds of jobs were created, and donations and tax revenue have poured back into the community.

In 2006, Gural revived the original quarter horse racetrack, known as Tioga Park, into a harness racetrack and facility that offered Video Lottery Terminals. Gural also runs the harness racing track Meadowlands Racetrack in East Rutherford, New Jersey, as well as Vernon Downs in Vernon, N.Y.

In 2014, Gural applied for a gaming license, which would allow table games at Tioga Downs. The state rejected his application, but Gural did not give up and was awarded the gaming license in August of 2016.

In December of 2016, Tioga Downs officially celebrated the opening of the gaming floor, which established Tioga Downs as a full-scale gambling operation. 

In December 2017, Tioga Downs opened a new hotel that boasts 161 rooms and spans six floors, and includes a new event center that can accommodate up to 450 guests for special occasions such as weddings, banquets and conventions. 

Tioga Downs also opened the full-service AgeLess Spa, a new fitness center, two rooftop decks, and expanded its dining options with the addition of new restaurant, P.J. Clarke’s. 

Tioga Downs also constructed a new clubhouse for the nearby Tioga Golf Club, which includes a new dining location, pro shop, locker rooms and a spacious banquet area for tournament receptions or those looking to host special occasions at the club.

This massive amount of development established Tioga Downs as a complete casino resort and one of the region’s most valuable tourist destinations. 

Since the beginning, in 2006, Gural has donated back to the community in either monetary support, especially for veterans, and has offered services, such as assisting nearby residents during the flooding in 2006 and 2011.

And as he has done each year since the casino’s opening, Gural will once again match ticket proceeds from a Wynonna and The Big Noise benefit concert for the Southern Tier Veterans Support Group. The concert, which is part of the Summer Concert Series, will take place on July 28 at 8 .m. Tickets are available for $15 each. 

Economically, Tioga Downs has contributed to Tioga County and its surrounding areas. In its first year, the casino contributed $1,322,606 in gross gaming revenue for the Town of Nichols and Tioga County, respectively, $1,419,669 for Broome County, $294,408 for Chemung County, $70,694 for Schuyler County, $718,780 for Tompkins County and $141,662 for Wayne County.

Since Tioga Downs opened, Gural has also donated several million dollars to charity, and intends to donate $1 million from his foundation to local charities each year in the future.

Gural, from day one, has pledged to support the community and stated his roots brought him to the area. Gural’s mother was from Binghamton, so he often chuckled with fond memories, wondering aloud what his mother would think if she knew of what he went through to obtain a gaming license.

Gural himself is also a horseman. In fact, and according to a New York Times article published several years ago, Gural’s obsession with horses was first fueled as a teenager on clandestine visits to the long-gone Roosevelt Raceway on Long Island.

The article described that Gural thought he was getting in the game cheap when he paid $10,000 for a light-footed trotter named Shadydale Yankios. Forty years later, the article continued, he has two standardbred breeding farms and three harness tracks in his portfolio – Vernon, Tioga and The Meadowlands.

Tioga Downs has assisted with the harness races held at the Tioga County Fair each year as well; so it was only fitting that Jim Mead, the fair’s racing superintendent, carry Jeff Gural in his 1908 Cadillac in this year’s parade.

Mead, about the opportunity, stated, “ Although our conveyance for the parade will be a Horseless Carriage, everything civilized begins with the horse. Agriculture, modern transportation, warfare and sportsmanship all passed through a horse-powered phase. Harness racing has long stood out as the Grand Old Sport in our area. Those who first dreamt of Tioga Downs knew that.”

Mead added, “It took Jeff Gural to make it happen. I’m happy to share our new fangled contraption with him at the Strawberry Fest.”

Gural, when asked to be the Grand Marshal for this year’s Strawberry Festival Parade, humbly stated, “Yeah, I went to that last year, and it was a good time.”

And Gural is also a supporter of the festival, with Tioga Downs serving as a major sponsor for this year’s event. The festival committee is grateful for this contribution, and is honored to have Jeff Gural serve as this year’s Grand Marshal.

And for those arriving from out of town for the festival, be sure to add to your plans a visit to the new Tioga Downs Casino and Resort. You might just decide to stay for a while.

To learn more about Tioga Downs Casino and Resort, visit www.tiogadowns.com.

For more information on this year’s festival, visit www.owego.org, or Follow the Historic Owego Marketplace on Facebook.