New coffee house a sign of recent alum’s growing success
Qamaria Yemeni Coffee Co., which opened recently in the J.W. Clay Parking Deck near campus, is among the latest design creations from A.B. Group.
This Charlotte-based architecture, interior design and building engineering firm is led by alumnus Alaa Bou Ghanem ’18, ’20. With an office East Boulevard, A.B. Group has a 12-member staff, including three Charlotte graduates, plus 65 projects underway in the Queen City; Charleston, South Carolina; and Austin, Texas.
And last year, Bou Ghanem launched a new venture: the real estate investment firm Cribia Capital, which specializes in residential real estate development, apartment communities and income-producing commercial mixed-use properties.
One of the first students at UNC Charlotte to enter the accelerated Integrated Path to Architecture Licensure program, he interned at Little Diversified while in school and was able to earn professional licensure concurrently with a Master of Architecture in 2020.
Read more about how Bou Ghanem started A.B. Group with a stack of business cards and pamphlets and spent three hours every afternoon attaching them to doors in areas of high construction, like Charlotte’s SouthEnd. It took six months, but clients started to call.
Photo: Alaa Bou Ghanem, standing, is in A.B. Group’s office on East Boulevard with members of his team, including Bradley Seckler, standing back, one of three UNC Charlotte alumni working there.