FORT KENT – A mechanical engineer who has been running a consulting business has been hired as the town’s economic development director.

John Bannen, 42, is from Portland but has been living in Fort Kent for nearly three years.

He was one of 10 applicants for the $35,000-a-year position. He succeeds Leo Trudell, who resigned to accept a position at the University of Maine at Fort Kent last spring.

“He’s been on the job about three weeks now,” Town Manager Donald Guimond said Tuesday.

“We had a good pool of local people,” Guimond said. “The four people who were interviewed from the 10 applicants were all from Fort Kent.”

Bannen said economic development has been an area of interest to him, and it isn’t that far from his professional engineering life.

“Engineering demands research and development, and they are actually close,” he said Tuesday. “Some of the same concepts come into play.

“Both look to get something off the ground, something that has to stand on its own two feet,” he said. “It was an interesting opportunity for me up here, an area where I would like to stay.”

Bannen said he has been using the time to acclimate himself to Fort Kent, and the department.

He’s getting up to speed on ongoing projects, including a housing assessment in the town.

He said the town has a few problems that it is working on and some will take time. He mentioned the location of a cellular telephone tower and snowmobile access trails.

“I’m getting organized, you could say,” he said. “Fort Kent is a pretty vibrant community, and the center of action for several other local communities. A lot of what is going on has to be maintained.”