ORANGE — Though the responsibilities are similar, it is inaccurate to call Adrienne Menges the new Kevin Kennedy.
He was Orange’s director of community development and planning. Menges is the community development administrator, a job title crafted by the Orange Human Resource Board.
Menges, 34, accepted the Selectboard’s job offer on Nov. 2 and said she has been focusing on seeing through several projects started before she joined the town’s payroll. Kennedy had been the planning and community development director for four and a half years and left in late September to take a job closer his home in Brookline.
Unlike Kennedy, Menges will not be tasked with applying for Community Development Block Grants. She said this grant writing will likely be handled by sub-contractors. Kennedy announced in July that Orange will not receive Community Development Block Grant money from the state. At the time, Kennedy said the town failed to score high enough on the criteria system the state Department of Housing and Economic Development uses to identify and prioritize need. Selectboard Clerk James Cornwell said at a Sept. 13 meeting that Kennedy was not successful in grant writing and suggested hiring a private company to provide this service.
Menges, however, said she will still be “doing other little grants.”
One of the existing projects Menges mentioned is the work on a new parking lot for the Orange Innovation Center. The business incubator at 131 West Main St. is owned by property investor Jack Dunphy and got a $200,000 grant to help build 40 additional parking spaces across the street. A vacant dilapidated house and an occupied trailer stood in the spot until Dunphy purchased the house in 2015 and the trailer last year to demolish both. Dunphy said he also purchased and renovated another house in Orange for the residents of the trailer.
Menges was hired a couple of months ago to temporarily act as film liaison for the “Castle Rock” production being partially filmed in Orange and to fulfill some of Kennedy’s other duties. She took the same online class Kennedy had to become a film liaison for the Stephen King-inspired show being produced by Hulu, a subscription video-on-demand service. Film liaison is an unpaid position.
Menges grew up in San Antonio and attended the University of Texas at San Antonio before attending graduate school at the University of Oklahoma. She said she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography, with concentrations in small town economic development. She worked for the state of Oklahoma for 10 years and in July moved to Athol from California’s Central Valley.
She said she loves New England for its quaintness and system of local governments, noting that focus is more on the county level in other parts of the United States.
“I just feel like I’m in a Hallmark (Channel) movie,” she said.