Drive down Los Gatos Boulevard this month and the story looks like abundance. A brand-new Whole Foods, nearly double the size of the one it replaced, has been open since April. A block away, banners for a Club Studio fitness boutique are going up where Rite Aid used to be. Word is spreading that a beloved San Francisco grocer is coming to town next spring. If you only counted the construction crews, you'd think this stretch of town was getting more places to shop, not fewer.
It isn't. By the time all the dust settles in mid-2027, this stretch of Los Gatos Boulevard will have one fewer full-line supermarket than it does today. The store disappearing isn't the one everyone's been watching. It's the one directly across the street.
What already changed
The new Whole Foods opened its doors on April 15, 2026, at 15650 Los Gatos Boulevard, on the corner with Los Gatos-Almaden Road. According to Whole Foods' own announcement, the store measures 43,130 square feet, nearly double the roughly 22,000-square-foot location it replaced after that store served the community for more than three decades.
The site itself has a bit of history worth knowing if you've lived here a while. It sits on the former home of a Chevrolet dealership that went dark during the 2008 recession and stayed vacant for years afterward. Sand Hill Property Company developed the replacement, and the new store now sits next to the Tesla sales and service center that opened there the year before.
Whole Foods leaned into the local angle for the opening. The specialty cheese counter carries Andante Dairy and Nicasio Valley Cheese. Produce comes in part from Tomatero Farm and Coke Farm. And the south side of the building features a four-panel mural by Los Altos artist Morgan Bricca, each panel a local bird tied to a season: a House Finch for spring, an American Goldfinch for summer, a Blue Jay for fall, and a Spotted Towhee for winter.
That's the part of the story everyone already knows. The next part is where it gets interesting.
The old building isn't sitting empty
The vacated Whole Foods space at 15980 Los Gatos Boulevard is inside the Cornerstone shopping center, the same center where Rite Aid closed back in 2022. That old Rite Aid footprint is becoming Club Studio, a boutique fitness and wellness operator.
The old Whole Foods space has a tenant lined up too. On August 18, 2026, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Gus's Community Market, family owned since 1981, will open its sixth store and first location outside San Francisco at that 15980 Los Gatos Boulevard address in spring 2027. Gus's has run neighborhood markets in San Francisco for over four decades, most recently expanding by taking over Canyon Market in Glen Park in 2022. This will be the company's largest store to date, with a café, an indoor-outdoor patio, and a roasting partner still to be announced.
Cilker, the Los Gatos-based firm that manages Cornerstone, frames the changeover as intentional. Vice president Mary Egan described the moves at the former Whole Foods site as a strategic repositioning of the property, bringing in two new tenants while managing the exit of two longtime ones.
So far this reads like a clean swap. New Whole Foods opens two blocks north. Old Whole Foods space gets a new grocer. Old Rite Aid becomes a gym. Nothing lost, just rearranged.
Then there's Nob Hill.
The store across the street
Nob Hill Foods has anchored El Gato Village at 15710 Los Gatos Boulevard since 1971. That's 56 years serving the same stretch of town. According to Hoodline's reporting this month, parent company Raley's has confirmed it will close the store at the end of June 2027, after choosing not to renew its lease. Raley's Chief Marketing Officer Carol Barsotti attributed the decision to a review of the store's performance and current economic conditions.
Here's the detail that matters if you drive this corridor regularly: Nob Hill sits directly across Blossom Hill Road from the new Whole Foods. The two buildings essentially face each other. Four months after the bigger, newer Whole Foods opened its doors, the store facing it from across the intersection announced it was done.
Raley's has closed other underperforming Nob Hill and Raley's-brand locations this year too, including a Mountain View store in May and locations in Roseville and Antioch earlier in 2026. Los Gatos isn't an isolated decision inside the company. But the timing on this particular corner, one supermarket doubling in size just as its across-the-street competitor gives notice, isn't something you'll find in a press release. It's something you notice only if you've been watching this stretch of road for a while.
Counting what's actually left
Here's the arithmetic that gets lost when each of these stories runs on its own. Right now, along this same stretch of town, you can shop at four full-line grocery stores: the new Whole Foods, Nob Hill Foods a few blocks away, the Safeway near downtown on the east side of Highway 17, and the specialty grocer Lunardi's five blocks north of the new Whole Foods.
By June 2027, that count drops by one. Whole Foods stays. Gus's Community Market fills the old Whole Foods building a block south. Safeway and Lunardi's remain where they've always been. Nob Hill, the only one of the group that's been on this exact stretch of road since before most current residents were born, will not be replaced by another supermarket in that same building. El Gato Village loses its grocery anchor entirely.
| Date | What's happening | Address |
|---|---|---|
| April 15, 2026 | New, larger Whole Foods opens | 15650 Los Gatos Blvd |
| September 2026 | Club Studio fitness opens in former Rite Aid space | Cornerstone shopping center |
| Spring 2027 | Gus's Community Market opens, first South Bay location | 15980 Los Gatos Blvd |
| June 2027 | Nob Hill Foods closes after 56 years | 15710 Los Gatos Blvd |
That's the actual shape of the change. Not more grocery options along this corridor. A different mix, with one legacy full-line supermarket gone for good and a new specialty grocer taking its place a block away rather than in the same footprint.
What it means if this is your regular loop
If Nob Hill is part of your weekly routine, you've got roughly ten months before that changes. Raley's has said it will try to place affected employees at other regional locations, and the closest remaining Nob Hill stores are in Campbell, Santa Clara, San Jose, and Morgan Hill if you want to stay loyal to the banner.
For everyday shopping, your options on this stretch will be the new Whole Foods, the incoming Gus's once it opens next spring, the Safeway near downtown on the east side of Highway 17, or Lunardi's five blocks north. None of them occupy the exact spot Nob Hill has held since 1971, which means the corner of Los Gatos Boulevard and Blossom Hill Road will look different in ways that go beyond a new coat of paint.
It's a small thing in the scheme of a town's life, one supermarket lease not renewed while a shinier one opens across the street. But it's the kind of detail that tells you more about how a neighborhood is actually changing than any press release does on its own. The number of banners on Los Gatos Boulevard isn't growing. It's just being redrawn, and the redrawing happens to fall hardest on the side of the street that didn't get the new building.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these shifts because you live here and plan to keep living here, that's the instinct that also matters when it's time to think about your own address. Brian Flack Team has been watching Los Gatos change block by block for years, and we're always glad to talk through what a given corner of town is actually like to live in, no listing required.
