Pleasanton’s Nob Hill Foods supermarket at 3112 Santa Rita Rd. will close next month, leaving Trader Joe’s as the city’s only major food store in the northeast section of the city.

When it closes, Nob Hill Foods will leave the city with six major food stores: Gene’s Fine Foods, Lucky, Raley’s, Safeway, Smart & Final and Trader Joe’s.

Work is under way on what will now be the city’s seventh supermarket, 99 Ranch Market, at the site of the former old Levitz furniture store in the Rose Pavilion. Part of an Asian American supermarket chain based in Buena Park, Calif., 99 Ranch has 28 stores, primarily in California, with other stores in Georgia, Nevada, and Washington. It is also considered a Taiwanese-American market because of the considerable amount of products imported from Taiwan.

Fresh & Easy, a British-owned grocery similar in size and marketing focus to Trader Joe’s, plans to open its first store in the area later this year, also in the Rose Pavilion in the space once occupied by Express Fitness

In addition, Safeway, with its corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, has plans awaiting approval before the city Planning Commission to build a large Safeway Lifestyle store at Bernal and Valley avenues, across from the fairgrounds. Those plans are on hold, however, until 2011 at the earliest.

Raley’s recently completed a major renovation and upgrading of its supermarket on Sunol Boulevard. However, the Sacramento-based company, which also owns 133 other stores under the Raley’s, Bel Air Markets, Nob Hill Foods and Food Source banners in northern California and Nevada, said at the time that it had no plans to modernize its Nob Hill supermarket in Pleasanton.

Gene’s, a privately-owned, family-operated store at 2803 Hopyard Rd., also recently completed a major upgrade of its Pleasanton store.