Parkdale is a mainly residential subdivision in the suburb of
Birchville
Birchville is a suburb of Upper Hutt, New Zealand in the North Island. Its centre lies at the entrance to the Akatarawa Valley
The Akatarawa Valley is a valley in the Tararua Range of New Zealand's North Island. It provides a link from the ...
in
Upper Hutt
Upper Hutt ( mi, Te Awa Kairangi ki Uta) is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand and one of the four cities that constitute the Wellington#Wellington metropolitan area, Wellington metropolitan area.
Geography
The Upper Hutt city cent ...
,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
. It is located north of the Upper Hutt city centre on the northern side of
Emerald Hill nestled between Birchville,
Te Mārua
Te Mārua (previously also known as Te Marua) is the easternmost urban suburb of Upper Hutt. For reasons of location and distance from the city, the area is often classified as rural. Te Mārua is well known for its Plateau Reserve where remna ...
,
Timberlea and
Brown Owl.
Although the developers originally pitched this housing development as a new suburb, this has not been accepted by the Upper Hutt City Council, which considers the subdivision to be part of the suburb of Birchville. Also, from as early as 1982, the New Zealand Geographic Board also clarified that Birchville, rather than Parkdale was the official locality name.
[New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa, P7]
New Zealand Gazetteer of Official Geographic Names (16 December 2010)
, retrieved 28 December 2010. Local residents rarely refer to it as a suburb of its own.
The major through street is Gemstone Drive, which runs roughly west–east from Akatarawa Road to the end of the subdivision at Topaz Street, which then connects with State Highway 2. Most other streets in the subdivision are cul-de-sacs and are named, alphabetically from Akatarawa Road, after gemstones (e.g. Amber Grove, Moonstone Grove).
This subdivision has a reputation for being a down-market suburb, because a number of own-your-own or cross-leased units erected early in the development (although this trend did not continue as the development progressed).
There is a
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...
church at the eastern end of the subdivision.
Notes
Suburbs of Upper Hutt
{{Wellington-geo-stub