Ben Johnson set a precedent last season and followed it Monday.

If the Gophers men’s basketball team is given the option to continue playing beyond the Big Ten Conference tournament in Indianapolis this week, the U head coach said Minnesota will take it.

And similar to nearly everything in college sports these days, what comes next will be new and different. If 12th-seed Minnesota doesn’t win the conference tournament and nab the automatic qualifier for the NCAA tournament, a new, smaller tournament has entered the fray.

In addition to the longstanding National Invitation Tournament, the College Basketball Crown, a 16-team tournament in Las Vegas from March 31-April 6, is making its debut. The Crown is positioning itself to rival the 32-team NIT, but how that shakes out this season is to be determined. The Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East will have two automatic qualifiers for the Crown, with others chosen by a committee.

“We would love for those opportunities,” Johnson said. “We’ve talked about that as a team. Obviously, let’s take care of this week and see how far we can go. The more you win, the more opportunities you have. One hundred percent, we would love to continue to play.”

The Gophers (15-16, 7-13 Big Ten) play Northwestern (16-15, 7-13) in the first round of the conference tournament at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse.

Last year, Johnson’s statement of intent to play in national tournaments paid off when other programs opted out of postseason play due to the affects of the NCAA transfer portal. That helped the U get into the NIT field, where they beat Butler and lost to top-seed Indiana State in the second round.

This year, the portal opens March 24 and closes April 22 and might lead to other programs to turn their attention to roster building. The Gophers will need to overhaul their roster again this offseason with new players but want to stay relevant by playing as many games possible while juggling the portal.

Other teams passing on playing in the Crown or NIT this season would help the Gophers’ chances to keep playing in March. The U is 94th in the NET ranking, but are one of only 21 teams nationwide with seven Quad 1 wins.

The Gophers have a senior-laden roster that should cut down on the amount of current players who might be looking for their next school later this month.

“(For) these guys to get as much college basketball as they can at this level is a good thing,” Johnson said. “That would be tremendous for us. I think the best thing to put us in that situation is to play well.”

Minnesota, which was picked to finish 18th in the conference this season, threatened to be one of the three basement-dwelling teams outside of the Big Ten tournament field for much of the season. But the Gophers’ win at Nebraska on March 1 essentially kept their season alive.

In their only matchup this season, Northwestern beat Minnesota 75-63 at Williams Arena on Feb. 25.

“It’s a big-time opportunity, and we have obviously a team that we owe in the first game,” said star forward Dawson Garcia. “It should be exciting.”

Head coach Ben Johnson of the Minnesota Golden Gophers reacts during the first half of the game against the Michigan State Spartans at Breslin Center on Jan. 18, 2024 in East Lansing, Michigan. (Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)
Minnesota’s Frank Mitchell, left, gets underneath Northwestern defender Keenan Fitzmorris during the Gophers’ 75-63 loss Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025, at Williams Arena. (Brad Rempel / Gophers Athletics)

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“At a base level, the next mayor has to use the city’s leverage in transactions involving public resources—especially land—to maximize public benefit, including deep and permanent housing affordability.”

NYC EDC

The current building at 100 Gold St.

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A rendering of a residential tower at the southernmost edge of Manhattan promises sweeping views of the New York Harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge. In the mornings, the building will cast a long shadow over New York City Hall, an early 19th century building that appears squat and inconsequential compared to a growing number of expensive high-rises nearby.

The new addition to the Financial District’s skyline will replace a mid-century office building at 100 Gold Street, which currently houses the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), auxiliary offices for seven other city agencies, and Hamilton Madison House, a storied older adult center serving downtown’s Chinese American seniors. Mayor Eric Adams announced the plan to sell HPD’s headquarters—which the city has owned since 1993—as part of a broader vision to bring Manhattan’s housing unit count to 1 million.

Despite a heavy rhetorical focus on affordability, the site’s redevelopment will be managed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC), an opaque, semi-public entity that is charged with generating economic activity in the city, not financing affordable housing. Rather than harnessing the city’s leverage to build new social housing on centrally located city-owned land, EDC is defaulting to the status quo: the developer is expected to use the state’s 485-x tax exemption, which requires them to set aside a quarter of the project as affordable housing; if they get a rezoning, that requirement could rise to 30 percent.

Despite the massive and rare opportunity presented by a large, public parcel in lower Manhattan, EDC expects nothing more from developers than what these programs already require on private sites. This is exactly the same approach as EDC’s state corollary, the Empire State Development Corporation, is taking at another prime location on publicly-owned land in Midtown Manhattan.

The actual depth, breadth, and length of affordability on the site are highly contingent on the vagaries of the market: there will only be funding for affordable housing and any other public benefits after relocation costs for the older adult center, HPD and the seven other displaced agencies are covered. After the sale, some public employees working out of 100 Gold Street will be shuffled into other public buildings across the five boroughs.

In the meantime, the city will lease back 100 Gold Street from its new owner, while shopping for office space for HPD and commercial space for Hamilton Madison. Agency relocations have been common in recent years, and this administration has come under scrutiny for relocating the Department for the Aging, the agency that runs Hamilton Madison, to an office building owned by a prominent Adams donor. Coincidentally, landlords have been fueling Adams’ re-election bid, helping to keep the campaign afloat as it continues to implode, while also donating prolifically to other candidates in order to ensure their place in the next administration’s priorities.

While there is no sign of impropriety in the 100 Gold Street deal, it is a blatant developer giveaway. Its public benefits are an illusion projected by an administration that expended all its credibility long ago. The sale is justified by an arbitrary goal written into a press release that will be forgotten as soon as the current mayor leaves office. The end result of the transaction will be that a lucky developer will get to build a luxury high-rise on some of the most expensive land in the U.S., while hundreds of civil servants and thousands of HPD clients will likely have longer commutes. A popular senior center will have to look for a new home, and the public will get a pinky-swear promise that their rents will decrease, one day, once the city helps build enough luxury rental units (a submarket that is quietly experiencing an over-supply crisis).

Mayor Adams is just the latest in a long line of New York City mayors who have given away public land to private developers. In 2018, a vacant land advocacy group identified over 200 lots that were sold to developers for $1 or less under the de Blasio administration. Under former mayor Bloomberg’s three terms, mind-boggling public resources went into transformational mega projects—Hudson Yards, Barclay’s Center—while our public institutions, including public housing, languished. And long before Giuliani was peddling election denialism, he presided over a civic fire-sale as former mayor of New York, giving away thousands of city-managed buildings for next to nothing and privatizing the city’s tax foreclosure system.

With affordability at the center of political debates and a New York real estate heir in the White House (again), the 2025 mayoral primary presents an opportunity to change course. At a base level, the next mayor has to use the city’s leverage in transactions involving public resources—especially land—to maximize public benefit, including deep and permanent housing affordability. As for 100 Gold Street, the city should use the site for an emblematic high-rise with comfortable offices for HPD workers and clients, a state-of-the-art senior center, and hundreds of permanently affordable, social housing apartments.

More broadly, the future administration must stop hiding behind the myth of a hapless and unsophisticated public sector playing second fiddle to private investors. We are a wealthy city with enough resources to house all New Yorkers. Our next mayor needs to acknowledge that and plan accordingly.

Mironova, Stein and Thompson are senior housing policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York.*

*Editor’s note: CSS is among City Limits’ funders.

The post Opinion: The 100 Gold Street Land Grab appeared first on City Limits.

The acclaimed new documentary “Free Leonard Peltier” will open the 44th Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, which runs April 2 through 13.

Screenings are $17, or $11 for MSP Film Society members. Six-packs of tickets are $85 and $55, while all-access passes are $800 and $550. For more details and the full lineup, see mspiff.org.

The festival will feature more than 200 films from around the world at the Main Cinema and Capri Theater in Minneapolis, Landmark Center in St. Paul and the Edina Mann Theatre.

Highlights of the festival include:

“Free Leonard Peltier”: Directors Jesse Short Bull and David France revisit one of the most discredited convictions in modern America, the double life sentences handed down to Indian rights activist Leonard Peltier for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of South Dakota. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January, just a week after President Joe Biden commuted Peltier’s life sentences. (7 and 7:15 p.m. April 2 at the Main Cinema.)

Opening night party: MSP Film Society has partnered with Owamni, the James Beard Award-winning Indigenous restaurant led by the Sioux Chef Sean Sherman, for a night of celebration with special guests, drinks, food and music. (9 p.m. April 2 at A-Mill Artist Lofts, 315 S.E. Main St., Minneapolis; tickets are $60, or $40 for members.)

“Brokeback Mountain” and a filmmaker conversation with director Ang Lee: The MSPIFF44 Milgrom Tribute, named in honor of festival founder Al Milgrom, will feature a live discussion with Lee, who is also known for “Sense and Sensibility,” “The Ice Storm,” “Life of Pi” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” A screening of “Brokeback Mountain” follows. It was one of 2005’s most acclaimed films, winning 71 awards around the world including Oscars for best director, adapted screenplay and original score. (4 p.m. April 6 with the screening at 7:15 p.m. at the Main Cinema.)

Writer/director Patrick Coyle discusses a scene in the film “Unholy Communion” with actor Adam Bartley. (Courtesy of Catrina Engleby)

Minnesota-made world premieres: The festival boasts two of them. “The Dance Is Not Over” is a documentary about local dancer, performer, choreographer, LGBTQ+ and publicly HIV-positive activist Patrick Scully. Director Patrick Coyle’s “Unholy Communion” is a murder mystery about a serial killer that’s based on a novel by Scandia author Thomas Rumreich and was largely shot in and around St. Paul. (Showtimes to be announced.)

RELATED: Adam Bartley talks about return to Minnesota for feature film shot in St. Paul

Other Minnesota-connected features: They include “Brooklyn, Minnesota” by Jessica Plank and Minnesota-raised Erik Jensen (filmed around Lake Minnetonka), “The Fun-Raiser” by Wyatt McDill (filmed on the Iron Range); “The Flamingo” by Adam Sekular (a former Film Society programmer), “Or Something” starring Minnesota-raised Kareem Rhama from the social media series “Subway Takes” and “Folktales” by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who hails from St. Paul. (Showtimes to be announced.)

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