Three years ago it was called the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Children's Museum, and it didn't exist anywhere other than in the minds of a handful of local parents.

They had been cooking up the idea of a local children's museum for some time, but they'd been stymied in their search for a suitable location. For a while they had designs on the former Wicked Burrito building on West Franklin Street, but that fell through.

Then, a stroke of good fortune -- or, more accurately, a stroke of remarkable generosity. Dana McMahan, owner of the Laughing Turtle shop in the heart of downtown, moved her store out of that space and offered it to the children's museum. Rent-free.

That gift was the catalyst for turning a great idea into reality. The operation got a considerably jazzier name -- Kidzu -- and swiftly became what its organizers had envisioned -- a fun, safe, welcoming place where young kids could play and learn.

Given the badmouthing downtown Chapel Hill gets -- we've been known to point out a problem or two -- you might have supposed that a children's museum would be a tough sell there.

But Kidzu has flourished. Last month a couple of brothers named Max and Cody -- 1 and 5 years old, respectively -- came through the door with their babysitter and were promptly feted as the 50,000th visitor to Kidzu since it opened in March 2006 (Kidzu wisely headed off any potential sibling rivalry by pronouncing them co-honorees).

For all its success, Kidzu once again finds itself facing an uncertain future. The space it's in is, and always was intended to be, temporary. The museum needs more room to meet the obvious and growing demand for what it does.

So Kidzu is looking for new digs. Incidentally, this is exactly what its organizers foresaw right from the start; their original idea was to open temporarily in a smallish space where they could get the museum firmly established and then move into a larger permanent spot.

But where? At the moment they're looking at two possibilities: a space at the other end of the 100 block of East Franklin Street in the building that houses the post office and courtroom, or a space in the yet-to-be-built expansion at 300 E. Main St. in Carrboro that will house The ArtsCenter.

Kidzu, we suspect, would do fine in either place. It has shown that it can succeed downtown, and in drawing families with children to Franklin Street the museum performs the important public service of improving the demographic diversity of the business district.

The Carrboro site seems at least as well suited, if arrangements can be made agreeable to The ArtsCenter and the museum. Kidzu serves mostly preschool-aged kids; The ArtsCenter's children's programs serve mostly older ones. Proximity, it would seem, would be to everyone's advantage.

Kidzu's success demonstrates that it clearly fills a need, and it's in the community's interest to help it continue to do so. A continued nomadic existence does nobody any good. We should do what we can to help the museum find a good, and permanent, home.