A contractor will remove the controversial statue of former Palm Springs Mayor Frank Bogert on Wednesday morning and transport it to a city maintenance facility where it will be stored for now, the city announced Monday.
The removal of the statue from the front of city hall, where it has sat since 1990, will begin at 7 a.m. and should be finished by 2 p.m., the city said in a statement.
The removal will be the latest step in a process that began over a year ago, when the Palm Springs Human Rights Commission voted to recommend that the city council vote to take the monument down.
Bogert served as Palm Springs' mayor during the 1950s and 1960s, an era in which both the city itself and its reputation as a leisure destination grew dramatically.
However, Bogert was in office when about 200 mostly nonwhite people were removed from their homes on Section 14, a parcel of land belonging to members of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. At the time, rules around how long such land could be leased for had recently changed, and the evictions, facilitated by the city, were intended to accelerate the economic development of the property.
Last September, the Palm Springs City Council voted unanimously to begin the process of removing the statue because Bogert was the mayor during the evictions. That started a lengthy process in which multiple arms of city government, including the council itself, eventually signed off on the removal.
On May 16, the city announced that the statue would be removed and placed in storage the following day. However, multiple protestors held a sit-in at the statue and it was not removed.
The protestors, who were associated with the Friends of Frank Bogert group that has pushed to keep the statue in place, said they wanted to ensure it remained standing until a May 18 court hearing. That day, a Riverside County judge issued a temporary order that the statue stay where it was while a lawsuit was litigated.
But on June 3, the judge declined to issue an injunction extending the order, a decision that freed the city to remove the statue.
In April, the city council rejected an appeal launched by the Friends of Frank Bogert after the city's historic site preservation board agreed to let the statue come down. The council voted to move the statue into storage until the city and stakeholders could find an agreeable location for it. That still hasn't happened.
In the press release Monday announcing the removal later this week, the city said it "remains committed to working with the Friends of Mayor Frank Bogert to find a mutually agreeable location to install the statue."
Palm Desert-based Art Collective Fine Art Services has been hired to oversee the removal process and transport the statue to the city maintenance facility. The release says the statue will be "safely stored" until a new location is found.
Desert Sun reporter Erin Rode contributed to this report.
Paul Albani-Burgio covers breaking news and the City of Palm Springs. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and via email at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2022/07/11/palm-springs-frank-bogert-statue-coming-down-city-hall-wednesday/10032568002/
2022-07-11 20:36:19Z
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