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In the past decade, it often seemed impossible that the $500 million FedEx project would ever get built at Piedmont Triad International Airport, given the red tape, rancor and litigation over its environmental impact.

Today the hub is nearly finished, and the big, white building stands alone at the end of Runway 23.

In about a year, FedEx and its hundreds of workers will be ready to shuttle thousands of packages a night between planes and cities. It also will become a mighty magnet for companies that want to be close to an overnight shipper.

But another job is just beginning: The communities around the airport must brace for the new jobs and prosperity while guarding against byproducts such as jammed roads, air pollution and haphazard commercial sprawl.

There’s no question that much of that planning won’t be finished when the hub opens, but that’s all right, say many close to the project.

“There is a perception that when the FedEx hub comes, there’ll be a deluge of customers lining up,” said Jo Ferreira , FedEx’s managing director of hub area business development . “That isn’t the way it happens.”

Local executives agree that growth will be gradual.

“I don’t think it’s going to be 'Katie, bar the door’ rampant growth,” said Arthur Samet, president and chief executive officer of Samet Corp. Samet is developing Triad Business Park on 320 acres straddling Guilford and Forsyth counties — a small piece of territory that could have a big impact on future growth.

“FedEx really represents infrastructure, and it is part of an integrated network — roads, airport, rail,” said Don Kirkman, president and chief executive officer of Piedmont Triad Partnership, the area’s regional economic development group.

“What we do have to be careful of is making sure we don’t encroach on the airport and kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” he said. Scattered housing developments, poorly planned retail centers or a sea of warehouses could repel the kinds of companies that bring well-paying manufacturing or distribution jobs to air hubs.

The airport is revising its master plan and will show it to Greensboro, High Point, Guilford County and other governments in early 2009 , but the airport’s executive director, Ted Johnson, said he wishes the airport were further along with the process.

He wants the airport to stay ahead of pressure to build homes or cheap commercial developments next door — the kind of development that gobbles up good land for a quick buck and keeps employers with better jobs and long-term prospects away.

Johnson and business leaders should get a list of planning and land-use tips later this month. International airport expert John Kasarda, director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC-Chapel Hill , is set to deliver his forecast of the airport area’s future to Kirkman and Piedmont Triad Partnership.

Kasarda calls industrial clusters around airports “aerotropolis” areas.

“I think there is no question that we’re going to be an aerotropolis, if we’re not already there,” said Henry Isaacson, chairman of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority. “The big thing for us is to manage that growth that we will have at and near the airport. ... In that regard the update on our master plan, with input from Jack Kasarda, is going to be a very important factor.”

The airport should take the lead, Isaac­son said: “Our job is to manage it, and that’s where I think the airport comes in — that’s what we can do best.”

Kasarda’s report will offer specific guidelines, Kirkman said, so leaders will have an educated opinion of the best moves to make. For example, Kasarda may recommend targeting flower or fruit distributors that need quick shipping.

At least one local economy expert said the region’s planners should step up their urgency because they are far from unified in their approach to airport development.

“We are behind the 8-ball. I’m not sure if we’re too late. But we have issues,” said Keith Debbage, a professor of urban geography at UNCG. “We can catch up. It just takes political will, and if we’re nimble and quick, we can catch up. But we need to move.”

Robbie Perkins, president of NAI Piedmont Triad commercial real estate and a member of the Greensboro City Council, said governments are already talking and working together. If a development opportunity or negative threat should arise near the hub, he believes the groups could mount an organized response.

“But I also think we’re in a recession,” he said, “and a lot of companies are taking their time making a decision, and the impact over the next 12 months is going to be less.”

It’s also possible to do too much planning too early, said an airport expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Richard de Neufville, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering , said PTI has done the right thing by writing a plan. That’s all it could have done until now, he said.

“If I were the airport manager, four years ago before there was not much context, I might have made the judgment that I couldn’t get anybody interested in this issue,” de Neufville said. “You may say it’s only happening now, but another person might say, 'Duh, it’s only happening now because people are only now interested in it.’ ”

Johnson said PTI has done well to expand to its current 4,000 acres , home to large companies such as TIMCO , Honda Aircraft and Cessna Aircraft’s Greensboro Citation Service Center.

“Could we have been more aggressive? Yes, if I had had another $40 to $50 million I could have been very aggressive,” Johnson said.

But buying up hundreds of acres may not be the right solution, de Neufville said, because the airport or the community could end up holding land for a long time.

“You could have a middle ground between making it possible and not having to put your own money out,” de Neufville said. “You can have your cake and eat it, too. You can think about how to enable the future without taking a big bet on it because a bet might be risky. Life is a big chess game ... and you need to think strategically.”

Guilford County has put the chess pieces in order by producing a map of the airport region that shows the zoning policies of Greensboro, High Point and Guilford County as they flow around each other like so many seas and peninsulas.

Kirk Perkins, chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, said that where the airport is concerned, Greensboro and Guilford need to come together in spirit now.

“I believe we need an official agreement of ideas that the commissioners and City Council want to put in effect out there,” Perkins said. “It’s not anything that’s set in concrete so there won’t be exceptions for the right reasons.”

The commissioners and City Council plan to meet with the Piedmont Triad Partnership later this month to discuss possibilities, he said.

Government, business and neighborhood leaders from Guilford and Forsyth counties and their four major cities also are working closely on the Heart of the Triad project that could result in a planned development of 18,000 acres on the counties’ shared border.

“Without assertive, cooperative action,” the group writes in a 2007 report:

• “Sprawling single-family homes will dominate the landscape.”
• “Employment opportunities will be lost.”
• “Improvements necessary for implementation will be too costly for any one jur­isdiction.”

Whether that action comes soon enough, said Greensboro Planning Director Dick Hails, is tough to say.

“It’s hard to know exactly how many folks and how quickly they want to come (to this area) in direct response” to FedEx, Hails said.

Samet, whose 313-acre Triad Business Park is about five miles west of the airport, said governments are already thinking alike when it comes to steering good development into the area.

It’s a balance, he said, between regulations and individual property rights.

“At the end of the day, everybody wants the same thing to happen,” he said, which is good, sustainable development.

Plenty of work has already been done to ensure development around the airport, said Becky Smothers, High Point’s mayor.

She believes that main arteries and feeder roads around the airport are crucial to good development and that good growth follows naturally.

And she emphasizes that High Point has already taken a big step toward cooperation between governments when it agreed to run water and sewer lines to the part of Kernersville that overlaps into Guilford County, including Samet’s park. In return, High Point will share any tax revenues that Kernersville collects from development on the land.

“The challenge is to try to assure the public that this is not a land-grabbing opportunity,” Smothers said. “It’s truly going to be our salvation for preservation because we know that the magnet that the airport represents will continue to draw development.”

No planning will be effective if companies can’t find the prepared land that they need for their plants and offices. Economic developers such as Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance , are keeping close watch on the number and size of sites ready for business.

Plenty of sites lie outside the airport area, including many in eastern Guilford County about 15 miles away. Lynch, Hails and others say those sites will be just as attractive to many companies that are happy to be within a 20-minute drive of the Fed­Ex hub. And costs will be lower there, too.

As a real estate expert, Robbie Perkins said builders will be forced to make some expensive compromises near the airport because the natural environment includes many streams and hills.

“You’ve got real issues there that limit the truly developable land in the area,” Perkins said. “I’m not sure that immediately beside the airport is going to be as important for some of these distribution centers.”

Perkins said that they will find plenty of sites available to the south along the Urban Loop while companies that make or distribute higher-value products such as computer chips will pay the higher prices to operate closer to the airport.

Samet said Triad leaders are making the right moves. The most important thing, he said, is that good-quality land and buildings remain available.

“It doesn’t have to be brand new,” he said. “As long as we have good available sites and buildings, we’ll be successful as a community.”

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