The Charlotte Trolley, already a welcome attraction with an ever-growing fan base, needs a permanent home. And if money is not found soon, it will likely lose the chance to get one with deep historic significance.

That would be a shame. Housing the Charlotte Trolley at the Duke Power streetcar barn could only enhance the trolley as both history and transportation. The barn was the site of a little known historic event in the city - a 1919 labor strike where five trolley conductors were killed.

Planners want the barn for the centerpiece of a retail and residential village to be called Manchester on South Boulevard. But $4 million is needed to buy and renovate the structure. Promised help from a would-be benefactor fell through a year ago, and so far no other donor has been found.

The trolley will have to move - even if it can't locate at the old Duke Power barn. The developer has other plans for its current location in the Atherton Mill near South End Brewery, and it will outgrow that site anyway. There are plans for a museum and full-scale daily streetcar service.

Dan Morrill of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission calls it a lost opportunity if the city doesn't capitalize on the historic connections of locating at the Duke Power site. "The trolley is already making Charlotte a different place, but for it to have its full impact, it has to be at this location," he aptly noted.

He's right. As the site of the worst labor violence in Charlotte's history, the place ripples with emotional undercurrents. On Aug. 25, 1919, members of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Workers of America had been on strike for two weeks, seeking higher pay and union recognition against the Southern Public Utilities Co., a forerunner of Duke Power.

Gunfire erupted after more than 2,000 people gathered, including armed strikebreakers and police. Five people died. Citizens were issued guns and put on patrol. Troops were sent in. And a "no-man's-land" was declared around the trolley barn, with a machine gun set up amid a pile of sandbags on South Boulevard.

This is history worth remembering.

Historian Morrill suggests that the county use $1.3 million in bond money designated for land acquisition to buy the trolley barn. The trolley company - a private enterprise - could then lease and buy it. The city could renovate the structure.