Kingsley Heights is a suburb of the city of Upper Hutt, located in the lower North Island of New Zealand. The suburb stands on a hill east of and overlooking the city centre, but has also started expanding into an adjacent valley.
All of the street names in the suburb have a British royalty theme. One example is King Charles Drive, the only road leading into the suburb, which is named after Charles II of England.
Kingsley Heights was proposed as a major subdivision project in the 1970's with Stage 1 beginning after the State Housing Corporation decided against using the land it owned in the area. Construction started in 1975 by First New Zealand RDC Limited and NZ Roadmakers, which consisted of 77 house lots. A delay was caused by the collapse of NZ Roadmakers however in 1976 The Leader, a local newspaper, announced construction had resumed. Around 1978 the first stage of road and utilities construction was complete and the first houses started to be built in the early 1980s.
The later stages of the project were delayed due to the economic downturn in the mid-late 1980s and the subsequent reduction in new home construction. The closure of the General Motors plant had a negative effect on employment in the city and so King Charles Drive ended at 19 and 26. Roading construction on the next stage of Kingsley Heights resumed many years later during 2001/2002 but it wasn't until 2005 that houses were built on Aragon, Boleyn and Beaufort. Craigs Flat, now known as Riverstone Terraces, which was also State Housing Corporation land but never used, had been promoted by various developers since the early 1990s as another major housing project in the city which also saw continued delays and reduced the urgency for the further expansion of Kingsley Heights.
King Charles Drive now ends at 41/58 with provision for the next stage of construction to continue in the future.
This suburb houses drinking-water storage tanks for Upper Hutt.
