A couple living downtown plans to renovate the front of their townhome at 421 Southwest B Street into a small boutique wine shop.

The plan is to turn a bedroom/den-type area on the ground level into a storefront that will fit no more than three customers at a time. The store will sell wine for off-premise drinking, with no in-store tastings or consumption.

The Cellar on B Street, as the 169-square-foot wine shop will be known, was approved at the Planning Commission meeting on August 5, with a permit that will allow operations for a year.

Owners Yulia Batalina and Paolo Piraino moved to the area about a year ago from Italy and have 15 years of wine business experience between the two of them.

“We are looking to bring the wine culture to Northwest Arkansas and really bring value, essentially, to how residents of downtown and Bentonville in general experience wine,” Batalina said.

Several neighbors spoke in favor of the wine shop, and none spoke against it.

Anne Marie Schudy, who lives a few doors down, said she enjoyed having businesses within walking distance and that she was “very excited to see what they build in that space.”

Brittany Poe, who lives across the street, had similar remarks.

“I love that being downtown there’s all these small-owned businesses that we want to keep alive, right?” Poe said. “That’s the whole point of living downtown—having something different, not that you see everywhere.”

Batalina said she thinks the shop will open sometime in September and that people can follow her company’s Instagram account to stay up to date on the progress.