Palm Springs’ Mixed Blessing : Tourism: Some merchants miss the young, wild students who brought money along with rowdiness. Others are just as glad they are gone.

Here’s the good news: All those damned hooligans have gone somewhere else. And here’s the bad news: All those darling college kids have gone somewhere else.

The townsfolk trying to recast spring break into something profitable and respectable without the influx of youthful revelers that brought notoriety and debauchery to this desert resort are having about as much luck as all the king’s men trying to rebuild Humpty Dumpty.

“We’re hoping to come up with the best of both worlds: a place where families can come and not feel threatened, but not have it be such an old-fogey’s event that the young people won’t want to come,” said Jerry Ogburn, manager of a civic organization called the Palm Springs Events Partnership, which coordinated this year’s activities.

So with varying levels of success, the city is staging “SunFest,” a collection of events that continues through today: car shows, a vintage car auction, a Renaissance festival, a street fair and concerts in the park. It is intended to bring a little spring and bounce back into town after two back-to-back years of something called “The Harvest Festival,” which residents say was even more boring than it sounded.

One of the gimmicks this weekend was supposed to be the return of cruising, the signature event of previous spring breaks that brought the city to its knees because it congested downtown with unruly young people. Cruising was finally banned two years ago and the main drag closed on weekends, with the city figuring that no downtown traffic was better than gridlock.

This weekend, cruising rights were extended to participants in the classic car show. They parked their ’23 Ford T-buckets and ’56 Chevys and ’66 Mustangs along the curb by day and got behind the wheel at night. Given the median age of their drivers, the going idea of great curves was a ’51 Merc. Goodby, thong bikinis.

Palm Canyon Drive was so filled with car gawkers Friday night that most of the vintage car owners were afraid to cruise. The vehicular gridlock of years past was replaced by pedestrian gridlock.

And how about this paradox: The street fair vendors were situated in such a way as to compel pedestrians to walk down the middle of the street, ignoring the regular storefront merchants who had plied their trade all year long and longed for a big spring break payoff for their loyalty.

“Between my three stores, I only had two customers Friday night,” said businesswoman Liz Cervantes. “It didn’t help that a street vendor right outside one of my stores was selling the same kind of jewelry I do.”

And then there was the battle of the hotels. In the old days, college students jammed the cheaper motels, while the upscale convention trade all but ground to a halt because business people and wealthier tourists wanted nothing to do with the place while the kids were in town.

This year, the fancier hotels are all but sold out and the cheaper places are struggling as never before.

“A few years ago, we had to negotiate with (business) groups to come out here by not only convincing them it was safe but by offering them 15% to 20% discounts,” said Cindy Veale, sales director for the Palm Springs Marquis Hotel. “They were avoiding Palm Springs and going to San Diego or Phoenix instead, to avoid the kids.”

But now that the word is out that spring visitors are bypassing Palm Springs in favor of destinations such as Lake Havasu, the group travel business has returned, Veale said. Her place is full, and charging full price.

But tell that to Soon Lee, owner of the Tropics Resort, long a popular motel for college students. Lee had come to rely on the income during spring break to pay his $67,000 property tax bill.

This week, less than half of his rooms are rented--mostly to UCLA students--and, for the third year in a row, Soon is going to have to borrow money to pay his property taxes, he said.

“The kids normally fill up this town, but for the past three years they haven’t come,” he said. “This is a big problem for us. Business is dead.”

Lala Boyers owns a downtown espresso shop--but closed her T-shirt store up the street just a couple of weeks ago because business was so bad. “Spring break used to bring me 20% of my annual income in just 10 days,” she said.

But other downtown merchants don’t miss the kids in the least.

Jim Cerenzia, sales manager for Desmond’s, an upscale downtown clothing store, said sales dropped 75% when the college students came to town and the regular customers stayed away.

Some business people are concerned with the long-term effects of the exodus.

“Those kids will remember that Palm Springs snubbed them, and they won’t come back when they’re married and have kids of their own,” said Bob Roberge, another salesman. “I miss the kids. I miss the string bikinis.”

Others note the return of long-lost customers who themselves had forsaken the desert resort.

“We’re getting calls from longtime guests who stopped coming here because of the kids but are now returning,” said Maria Angelo, operations manager at the Palm Mountain Resort in downtown Palm Springs. “Even the European tours are coming back through town.”

Not only are out-of-towners now walking around downtown Palm Springs on weekend nights during spring break; even residents are reclaiming the streets.

“I’ve lived in Palm Springs for 12 years and I didn’t come anywhere near downtown during spring break--I didn’t like the traffic and didn’t like getting squirted by the water pistols,” said Eric Burkholter. “But this--all the old cars and everything--is fun.”

Some college students are still coming to town, like Denise Peterson of Huntington Beach.

“Our friends asked us, ‘Why don’t you go to Havasu instead? It’s a lot more crazy there,’ ” she said. “And that’s why we didn’t go there. It’s too crazy. Here, we can just relax.”