Today, a big players in Tacoma nightlife outlined two new projects coming to downtown. Club owner Jon Tartaglia tells me Cans is going country under a new name, the Big Whisky Saloon; and the nearby Vault will soon re-open as an upscale, new dance club, Encore.

Big Whisky is a concept conceived by Tartaglia’s partner, Roger Rahil. And they expected to unveil the new theme at 100 S. Ninth St., on April 30. Tartaglia and Rahil also expect to open Encore a few weeks later at S. 11th and Pacific Avenue.

Tartaglia and Rahil ran adjoining downtown nightclubs the Loft and 21 Commerce, arguably Tacoma’s hottest spot when they sold to Maggie O’Toole’s owner Jeff Corbin in 2006. Renamed the Loft at 21 Commerce, the bars closed in 2008.

“We had a good run, three years,” Tartaglia said of Cans, which he opened in a space previously occupied by dance clubs Taboo and Seven Cities in 2007. Tacoma’s Comedy Underground is downstairs.

“We just felt, from a competitive standpoint, we wanted to separate ourselves from the market a little bit,” Tartaglia said.

He said he was inspired by the void left when by last year’s closing of McCabe’s American Music Café, a popular destination for local country fans.

“We’re not playing just strictly a country format,” he clarified. “It’s sort of country and rock, so you’re going to hear everything from AC/DC to Garth Brooks.”

Encore will be more along the lines of the Loft and 21 Commerce.

“It’s been 10 years since we built the Loft,” Tartaglia said. “It kind of set the bar for what nightlife was in downtown Tacoma at the time, in doing something a little bit more upscale. We kind of wanted to up the ante a little bit. That was our plan, and that’s where Encore came about.”

Some design elements will remind patrons of the 21 Commerce days, Tartaglia said, while others – i.e. VIP cabanas roomy enough for parties of 15 – will be more upscale.

“We have about 9,000 square feet of total, and it’s gonna look amazing,” he said. “We’re putting a little more time and effort into this one than we’ve done in the past. We know a lot of things now. We know what people liked about the Loft and 21 Commerce. We know what they didn’t like. We’ve started taking all that data that we have into building the perfect venue.”

And that’s all in addition to upcoming openings of the Surreal Ultra Lounge, down the street at 728 Pacific Ave, and the aforementioned Firwood, which you can learn more about here.