Birmingham’s CCR Architecture & Interiors is responsible for many buildings across the region, like 20 Midtown, pictured above.

The Birmingham-based architecture firm behind buildings like 20 Midtown and Lakeview Green turns 25 this year.

CCR Architecture & Interiors is a small, women-owned business that was founded in Birmingham in 1996 by Tammy Cohen. Located in office space on bustling First Avenue South, it now boasts 19 employees and has literally left its mark on Birmingham through designing structures that make up the skyline of the Magic City.

“The ease of meeting people and starting a business would not have happened in [a city like] Atlanta, for me, personally,” said Cohen, the firm’s president. “Relationships here are easier to make and its easier all around to get to know the community. Instead of working anonymously in a big city, it’s been great.”

The company provides architecture, interior design, construction administration services and more, and projects it has worked on include office buildings, multi-family developments and mixed-use projects. Additionally, CCR has completed over 50 historic renovation projects across Alabama.

Cohen said the key to 25 years in business is flexibility, communication and, above all else, service.

“We provide good service to clients so we can keep them coming back,” she said. “Repeat clients are always our best clients.”

CCR’s mission is to take the spaces it works with and improve them for the future.

“We transform spaces to have an impact that attracts new people and creates an atmosphere that keeps them coming back,” Cohen said. “We believe that our work is about relationships – the relationship between us and our clients, the relationship between us and our vendors and, finally, the relationship between the space and the people that use it. All of these relationships have to work in order to have a successful project.”

As a small business owner, one often has to do it all, Cohen said. In addition to being CCR’s president, she is also an architect and an interior designer. And, though she has no plans to retire anytime soon and hopes to be with the company well into its next 25 years, she’s actively training and transitioning younger employees to keep the firm headed in the right direction for the next quarter-century and beyond.

“We are intentionally training our architects and designers to be future leaders of the firm and community,” Cohen said.