With cranes on high and bulldozers rumbling, Raleigh developer John Kane is in the thick of building his second dose of shops, offices and homes at North Hills.

Now his empire, which in less than a decade has grown to 130 acres straddling Interstate 440 and Six Forks Road, is poised for more growth. Eventually.

Kane has negotiated "right of first refusal" -- deal-speak for dibs -- on 65 undeveloped acres east of the intersection.

He's had his eye on the dirt for years. The deals give him future control.

Most of the land is now controlled by family trusts. If the families ever decide to sell, they'll have to offer the land to Kane first. And if some unsolicited investor swoops in with an irresistible offer, Kane has the chance to top it or walk away.

It's too early to know what would be built on the land, which stretches east along the outer edge of the Beltline to Wake Forest Road. Kane wouldn't comment.

But look west, and you'll get the idea. Kane's empire has expanded around the former North Hills Mall on the west side of Six Forks. He leveled the mall and built a thriving 40-acre, $250 million mixed-use development there.

Southwest of I-440 and Six Forks, he is completing a single-family, townhome and condominium development called Ramblewood.

East of Six Forks, he is developing 50 acres, where the company and its partners are building an office tower, a grocery store topped with apartments, a hotel and a continuing-care retirement community. More is coming.

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Highwoods Properties, a landlord of some of the Triangle's biggest office buildings, is leasing space to one of the Triangle's biggest landlords of little spaces.

Offices Suites Plus has agreed to rent 18,000 square feet from Highwoods at CentreGreen Five off Weston Parkway in Cary.

Office Suites leases spaces in office buildings, slices the space into furnished offices equipped with phones and Internet, then subleases the suites to individual companies -- startups, lawyers, financial planners, and so forth -- that share a receptionist, meeting rooms and other common areas.

The Lexington, Ky., company has four other Triangle locations -- two in Cary and two in Raleigh. CentreGreen, its fifth, will offer 70 suites averaging roughly 150 square feet each late this year.

The business doesn't compete with Highwoods. The Raleigh real-estate investment trust would rather focus on developing and filling buildings with big tenants. And its 100,000-square-foot CentreGreen Five, finished this year, is now about 70 percent leased.

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More brokerage consolidation:

Real-estate services firm Colliers Pinkard, with offices in Raleigh, Charlotte and Baltimore, is merging with three other Colliers International affiliates: Colliers Turley Martin Tucker of St. Louis, Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers of Washington and Colliers ABR of New York.

The combined firm will have national reach, overseeing a property-management portfolio of 288 million square feet and a leasing portfolio of about 210 million square feet.

The independent brokerages have increasingly worked together to close deals. In the past year, for instance, Cassidy & Pinkard represented sellers of Crossroads Corporate Park in Cary and Raleigh's Venture Center. It had plenty of help from on-the-ground brokers at Colliers Pinkard.

"It's a natural step to take, given that we work so closely together," says David Finger, managing partner of Colliers Pinkard's Raleigh office. "It just formalizes a relationship that has existed for some time."

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