Updated with remarks from Junki Yoshida.

If you're a Portland fan of sand sculptures, you may be stuck driving to the beach to get your fix from here on out.

Yoshida's Sand in the City event, which turned Pioneer Courthouse Square into an enormous sandbox each July for 20 years, will not continue in 2016. The fundraiser matched corporate teams with architectural firms in a contest to build the most impressive sand sculptures this side of Cannon Beach.

According to a press release on the event's closure, those gritty efforts accumulated in more than $3.5 million raised for local children's charities, including $100,000 from its swan song event in 2015.

Sand in the City began dumping loads of sand into Portland's living room in 1996, when Junki Yoshida - of Mr. Yoshida's Marinade & Cooking Sauce fame - teamed up with Hoffman Construction and volunteers from the Kids on the Block children's program, the press release said. Both Yoshida and Hoffman construction remained sponsors through the end, even as it became an all-volunteer event in 2013.

"I hate to see it go away," said Yoshida. But, it's expensive to rent Pioneer Courthouse Square, he said, and "Twenty years is long enough."

Yoshida said the sand dump was planned as a one-time event when he first signed on. But it was successful and fun, he said, so that first year turned into five.

Then there was another five years, and another, and another, each set separated by another decision to keep going just one more round.

By now, Yoshida said he feels Sand in the City accomplished what it set out to do, and he's refocusing his attention to things like health care at Randall Children's Hospital. So this time, there won't be another round.

That is, unless someone decides to pick up where Yoshida and his partners left off.

"I hope somebody takes over," he said. "People depend on that money."

Along with the countless children who came out to see the dragons, elephants, tree trunks and good ol' sand castles that came out of the Sand in the City, over 1 million children benefited from the funds it raised.

--Dillon Pilorget

503-294-5927