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The Pella community was awarded two major honors Thursday at the 2009 Iowa Tourism Conference. Pella was named “Community of the Year”, and the Vermeer Mill and Pella Historical Village was named “Attraction of the Year”, both for communities with populations up to 10,000. The only other classification for those two categories was for cities above 10,000. In all there were 19 total awards given out.

The awards were presented by the Iowa Tourism Office and the Travel Federation of Iowa at a three-day conference in Tama that brings together nearly 300 industry representatives from across the state to network and discuss emerging industry trends. Tourism is a $6.4 billion industry in Iowa, employing nearly 65,000 people statewide.