Handcar Regatta co-owners ending business relationship

Ty Jones and Spring Maxfield, founders and co-owners of the phenomenally popular Handcar Regatta, are ending their business relationship and moving on to other creative pursuits.

Will either seek to continue the 4-year-old "exposition of mechanical and artistic wonders"? Spring almost certainly will not.

"It has run its course," she said Wednesday. She loved the regatta as a free-admission, community art happening that she feels certain will live on through offshoots that will scatter like seeds on the breeze.

Spring said it was always a given that the regatta could use the tracks at Railroad Square/West End only until SMART needs to begin work to prepare for commuter rail service, and she can't see moving it.

"It was magic," she said. "It's time to let the regatta go because there's a whole world of other things I'd like to experience."

For his part, Ty said it appears that with SMART preparing to commence construction on the tracks in Santa Rosa, the regatta won't be able to return there.

"Certainly the future of the regatta is in doubt," he said. He's not yet ready to say if he will or will not try to keep the regatta going, perhaps at a different location or without the element of races on rails.

Like Spring, he says he's ready to take on other challenges. One, "LuBu Nation," a food event hailing the place Luther Burbank regarded nature's chosen spot, is set for next summer.

So it seems the Handcar Regatta was an act of magic that we were lucky to have for four straight years. If it happens again, in Railroad Square or elsewhere, that will be lucky, too.