Spotlight is on Tribeca as lease deals line up.

32 Avenue of the Americas, which has grabbed attention for its large floorplates and bargain values, is close to signing for 60K s/f with Cambridge University Press. Cushman & Wakefield is repping Cambridge in the deal.

The potential lease comes on the heels of an early October lease at 32 Avenue of the Americas for 43K s/f with global advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and is part of what brokers are calling an ongoing boom in activity from media, publishing, and advertising firms especially in Midtown South and Lower Manhattan.

"The creative sectors of the economy, the publishing and advertising companies, are very active right now," said Jason Pizer, a broker at Trinity Real Estate. "Media type companies seem to be doing well and are drawn to Tribeca and Hudson Square because there is a cool vibe."

Trinity, whose portfolio of 14 office properties is located in Hudson Square, a neighborhood directly north of Tribeca, just signed a lease for 52K s/f at 1 Hudson Square with Nature America, a scientific publishing unit of Macmillan Publishers. And more deals could be on the way.

The firm is currently in talks for a roughly 50K s/f lease with another so-far unnamed publishing company at 225 Varick Street. Trinity also has a giant 300K s/f chunk of vacancy available at 900K s/f 345 Hudson Street, space that was freed up when financial publisher Bowne & Co. relocated its operations to 55 Water Street in June and that according to Pizer could "go in one or two deals worth over 100K" in the next few months.

Both 32 Avenue of the Americas and the buildings in Trinity's portfolio may be benefiting from a recent leasing deal done by Google. Taking 270K s/f at 2.9 million s/f 111 Eighth Avenue in mid September, Google is said to have bumped a number of companies interested in taking space in the Chelsea giant a little further downtown.

Among the closest buildings comparable in size and feel to 111 Eighth Avenue, 32 Avenue of the Americas has impressed tenants in its own right with infrastructure left over from its days as a telecom hotel and asking rents in the mid $30s psf. According to William Rudin, president of Rudin Management, which owns the building, the property also benefits from the recent incentives package passed for downtown that offer tax breaks and rent subsidies for tenants.

"The economy seems to be doing well, but I think it's the incentives that are really starting to have an impact," Rudin said. "A lot of space at 32 Avenue of the Americas sat vacant for months and even years and then when the incentives were passed, all of a sudden there was interest. They definitely played a role in the activity we've seen."

Bartle Bogle Hegarty is said have been initially resistant to the idea of going to Tribeca, preferring instead the hot Chelsea office market, until Ken Salzman and Michael Ippolito, the Newmark brokers repping the firm, convinced its execs of the value of the space and urged them to capitalize on it amid a tightening office market.

"It spoke to them from an infrastructural perspective, but they see what a wonderful creative canvas this building will provide for them," Salzman said.