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After standing for 32 years and prompting a year of controversy and litigation, the statue of former mayor Frank Bogert was gone from its pedestal outside Palm Springs City Hall with half an hour’s work Wednesday morning.

At 7:30 a.m., the statue still stood where it had been since 1990. But by 8:20, it was gone from the site, on its way to an indoor city storage facility after being loaded onto a truck.

The job was done by a small team of workers from Palm Desert-based Art Collective Fine Art Services who pulled the statue from the rocks it has sat on for decades and placed it onto the back of their truck.

Watching was a crowd of both supporters and opponents of the removal.

They included several members of the group “Section 14 Survivors,” who lived on the land of that name in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when about 200 residents, mostly people of color, were evicted from the land, with city help while Bogert was mayor.

The land is owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, as it was then. Whether Bogert bears blame for the removals — and how much — has been at the heart of the recent debate.

Members of the Friends of Frank Bogert group who have opposed the statue’s removal and filed a lawsuit over it were also watching Wednesday.

Several city staff members and a few police officers were on hand.

Betty Mayfield-Taylor, who lived with her family on Section 14 until they were forced from their home when she was 7, called the removal “a historic event for those who lived on Section 14.”

“To see him and his statue being removed, for those that are fighting to keep the statue, that’s how we felt when we were removed from our homes,” she said. “It’s coming full circle to watch him be removed from city land like he removed us from Section 14.”

Renee Brown, a Palm Springs Historical Society curator and city council candidate who also came to city hall to watch, has said Bogert had become an easy scapegoat in a complicated issue.

“Blaming Frank Bogert for Section 14 is like saying Christy Holstege is the only person responsible for homelessness,” she said Wednesday, referring to the current councilwoman and former mayor.

The statue controversy began in earnest in April 2021, when the Palm Springs Human Rights Commission voted to recommend its removal because of Bogert’s role in the Section 14 evictions.

In September, the city council unanimously agreed and ordered staff to begin devising a removal process. The move got the OK of the city’s Historic Site Preservation Board in February.

After members of Friends of Frank Bogert sued, a Riverside County Superior Court judge temporarily blocked removal in May. But after a hearing in June, she declined to extend that order, freeing the city to take it down.

By Tuesday evening, metal fences and “keep out” signs had been placed around the site. On Wednesday morning, several American flags had been placed just inside the fencing.

Amado Salinas II, who held a sit-in at the statue when the city first attempted to move it in May,  succeeding in delaying the removal, later picked up the flags at the request of police.

When asked who had placed the flags, Salinas said it had been members of the Friends of Frank Bogert who wanted to honor Bogert’s military service as well as his service to the city.

Salinas was not planning any more sit-ins, saying the friends group planned to respect the judge’s decision to allow the statue’s removal.

Even though the judge, Carol A. Greene, declined to block the removal, she said the city could have to move it back to its pedestal at city hall if the lawsuit from Bogert supporters ultimately prevails.

Norm King, a former Palm Springs city manager and one of the directors of the Friends of Frank Bogert, said the city should have kept the statue in place until a final ruling had been made.

“There is no need to do this now,” King said. “Just let it play out.”

David Brinkman, a noted Palm Springs architect and another leader of the group, called the removal of the statue “wrong in so many ways,” saying it’s based and wrong or incomplete information about the Section 14 evictions and Bogert’s role.

Brinkman said the prolonged controversy could have been avoided if the city had long ago come to Bogert’s widow, Negie, and asked for her blessing to move the statue to the Village Green. Both Negie Bogert and the friends group announced in June they support that move as a way to resolve the litigation.

With the statue gone from city hall, attention turned to the future of both the statue and the city hall site where it once sat.

The city and the contractor are discussing plans for storing the statue on a pallet briefly or, if needed, for the long term in a crate, said Arlene Amick, owner of Art Collective Fine Art Services.

Mayor Lisa Middleton told The Desert Sun in June that the Village Green has not “won broad acceptance in the community” as a new home for the statue. She has suggested Sunrise Park, an idea the city council has not formally considered; or the Neuro Vitality Center on East Alejo Road not far from city hall, which the friends group’s lawyer, Rod Pacheco, said is not visible enough.

Friends of Frank Bogert put out a press release accusing the city of failing to sincerely try to find a new location, but Deputy City Attorney Ryan Guiboa said officials remain committed to finding one.

Pearl Devers, the founder of a group of former Section 14 residents, has said the group would oppose placing the statue at the Village Green or another public site, but would be OK with it being in a museum.

City spokesperson Amy Blaisdell said no decision has been made about the future of the land where the Bogert statue sat.

However, former Section 14 resident Mayfield-Taylor had some ideas, including a statue of a mayor “that really cared about their people,” such as Sonny Bono, or one of Ivory Murrell Sr., a well-known resident and church deacon in the Desert Highland Gateway Estates neighborhood who died early this year.

Pointing to the words “the people are the city” inscribed on city hall, Mayfield-Taylor said a more suitable statue would live up to that ideal.

Cynthia Sessions, who said she was removed from Section 14 with her family when she was 5, watched the statue come down Wednesday and said afterward: “It was nice to see Frank ride off into the sunset, wherever they are going to put him.”

While the removal of the statue was greeted with cheers by the former Section 14 residents Wednesday, many said they will continue to push for justice, including reparations for those evicted and their descendants. After a lengthy discussion on that topic in May, the city council instructed staff to research the issue and come up with proposals.

“This here was just one part of the puzzle,” Mayfield-Taylor said.

Paul Albani-Burgio covers breaking news and the City of Palm Springs. Follow him on Twitter at @albaniburgiop and via email at [email protected].