Your idea is a great one. It's actually a fire hazard to have a cooktop that close to a tall wood cabinet. Especially a gas one. It will also be nice to have countertop next to your slide in range to land hot items. Go for it.

Btw, you probably know this, the soffit above the current tall cabinet will need to be cut back for the future less deep wall cabinet. Hopefully there's nothing hidden inside of it like HVAC or plumbing.

Because you didn't specifically say so, I have to ask if you are contemplating a complete gut remodel. I don't know how you can make a change like you describe without doing so. The oven stack of cabinets doesn't look like it lends itself to being repurposed and the cabinets look pretty old. If so, we certainly need a complete floorplan as Jan says. You should also be looking at the pictures of kitchens in Houzz. There are literally millions of them. Those will show you what other people have done. A range instead of cooktop and ovens certainly looks like a good idea in your situation, but without being able to see the whole kitchen no one can know if there is possibly an even better solution.

We need more info, a to scale floor plan as mentioned with every measurement clearly marked do not include any cabinets in the floor plan just show with an X where the gas line is. Are you in apartment or a house ? A rough ideaof budget and then read the ansers some you will not like just take them all in. There are many KDs on this site so listen. Please DO NOT strat another post . The floor plan the pictures and anything else pertaining to this topic are dealt with in comments here . Post the plan in jpeg format We will ask questions as we go along answerthose here.