A building, historical (Patreon)

In my mental model of TWB's Alaskan small town that has elements of several actual towns but isn't any one actual place, I picture the street that Cara's shop is on, as one that was originally part of a "main street", and thus had several prominent stores and buildings built on it many years ago. But as the town expanded, it naturally moved away from the street as a "city center", and as traffic declined, so did the fortunes of the stores.

At the current in-story time, the area is seeing a small revival, as the kitschy, antique-loving crowd finds it, and while it never really got properly dilapidated, new stores are trickling in- albeit kind of small, self-employment arts-and-crafts type and curio type shops. It's still not a booming area, of course, but presumably the prior coffee-shop owner saw the resurgence and tried to take advantage of it.

Miki and Cara, too, saw the same thing- the artsy-craftsy places coming in, and thinking it would be a great place for a boutique coffee shop. And it is, and will likely get even better, but it's also suffering from the reputation of the previous owner, who was kind of a jackass, and sold terrible coffee at absurd prices.

The building itself is a turn of the century red brick 2-story structure, with old-time high ceilings, tall windows, and lots of hardwood fittings.

There's two stairways up to the (interior) "front door"- the one we see them taking today, which is accessed from a back room in the coffee shop, and one which is accessed from the street, to the left of the coffee shop's facade. You can go in from the street, up the stairs, pass the doors, down the other stairs, and wind up in the back room of the shop.

There's also a third access to the apartment, in the parking area/alley out back, via an iron staircase and small wrought-iron, fire-escape type landing. There's also a back entrance to the coffee shop below, as well.

On the front, street-side face, just above the stairway entrance, is another very small wrought iron "balcony", with just enough room to be able to step out of the apartment and see the street, or get a little sun.

The buildings in this section of street are "brownstone" style, and share walls, but there's no access through from either floor of Cara's place to the stores or offices on either side. Hers is also the only living quarters on that side of the street, and the offices on either side are generally empty at night so there's no problems with noisy neighbors, or having her TV turned up too loud.

Doc.