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Bob Duncan has spent his career working his way past bats and buildings with one goal in mind: Protect the economic luster of Indianapolis International Airport.

As an attorney for the airport and now director of the Indianapolis Airport Authority, Duncan believes that the wrong kind of development outside an airport can cripple its potential to attract thousands of jobs to the region.

"You've got to protect your airport," Duncan told a group of transportation and business leaders here Thursday. "You've got to protect it from noncompatible land use."

Duncan came to town to help the Piedmont Triad see into its future. FedEx operates a major hub at his airport and will open its East Coast hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport in 2009.

His visit comes as Greensboro is forming a nine-member committee of City Council members, Guilford County commissioners and airport authority members to study and report on ways to manage airport growth.

Henry Isaacson, the airport authority chairman, has said the region must act quickly to determine suggested boundaries where residential development should be discouraged around the airport.

PTI also has begun updating its master development plan, which was last updated in 1994.

Duncan's message: Buy more land and keep the airport safe for business development that will attract distributors and transportation-related companies.

But a key difference between Indianapolis and PTI could make the issue harder to sort out here: Indianapolis' airport was surrounded largely by rural land in its fast-growth days; PTI is already surrounded by homes and offices.

Duncan said that when he was a lawyer in 1973, "my job was to buy ground."

"I'm still buying land for the airport," he said. "You sometimes have to be ready for the opportunities that suddenly present themselves."

The result is an airport with 7,700 acres, more than twice PTI's size.

And with FedEx looming, some developers want to build housing next to PTI for its workers now, something the airport authority has actively discouraged, as it did this past summer when builder Roy Carroll eventually backed away from plans for an apartment complex.

If the airport looks for ways to expand, Duncan said it doesn't have to roll over residents and nature in the process.

In the 1990s, Indianapolis airport went through major expansion as the U.S. Postal Service and United Airlines were building on 400 acres there.

But the tiny Indiana bat was there first.

Environmental laws required Duncan to find other wooded areas for the endangered bats' habitat. With a potentially expensive deadline facing him, Duncan started calling woodland owners until he had enough land within reach of the airport where the bats could live.

Now, a checkerboard pattern on the map shows about 600 acres permanently reserved for bats while development goes closer to runways and airport buildings.

The airport also has bought 1,000 houses through the years to help with expansion.

PTI has bought some homes that will be most vulnerable to the FedEx hub's noise at night. It continues to buy homes and land as they become available.

The Piedmont Triad Partnership, the region's economic development group, brought Duncan here as part of a campaign to pull all the cities and counties together in an aggressive planning process before FedEx's arrival.

In June, worldwide airport development expert John Kasarda, of UNC, told a Piedmont Triad Partnership group that booming growth will come from FedEx, and it will require cooperation across the Triad and careful planning so it is manageable and visually appealing.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or dbarron@news-record.com