Whatever the world thinks about the Vancouver Olympics and its mini-avalanche of logistical hiccups, one local initiative is going better than anyone expected. It's the B.C. Pavilion, the province's attempt to market itself as a business destination.

Located on the top floor of the Vancouver Art Gallery, with a terrace that offers a sweeping view of the crowds in Robson Square below, the pavilion is attracting hundreds of business leaders and international officials who are considering investing in the province.

While the province won't reveal who is attending and whether any deals have been signed, officials are calling it the best business-generating forum they've had in years.

At the current rate, thousands of business people from around the world will go through it by the end of the Olympics.

It's a welcome success after the sad-sack effort by the federal and provincial governments to market B.C. and Canada at the Beijing Summer Games in 2008. B.C.-Canada House was located a few blocks from Tiananmen Square, where few could find it. Even if you did scope it out, security was so tight many gave it a pass. It was a dead zone that cost B.C. and Canadian taxpayers well over $14 million.

Not so with the B.C. Pavilion here. While access is controlled, the province wisely pumped about $7 million in the centre of what is becoming the most exciting place in Vancouver during the Olympics: Robson Square.

Aside from the revamped ice-skating rink, where Olympic athletes are showing up to skate, large crowds are being attracted by the zip line that flies people across the square, nightly fireworks displays and free admission to the Vancouver Art Gallery to an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical sketches.

The bonus for British Columbians is not just that the province has finally figured out a slick method of promoting itself, but that Vancouver has also rediscovered a West Coast version of Manhattan's Rockefeller Centre. What we're seeing during the Olympics is exactly what Arthur Erickson, the architect who designed Robson Square, envisioned for the city.

Premier Gordon Campbell says 25,000 people have already come through the B.C. Pavilion. He anticipates hundreds of millions of dollars in investment deals as a result but, just as importantly, he thinks the city has restored an architectural icon.

"For a long time Robson Square wasn't maintained," he says. "We paid a fair chunk of dough bringing it back to muster."

It almost didn't happen, though.

Remember the massive wooden roof the province wanted to erect over the skating rink? That $40-million plan, which would have destroyed Erickson's masterpiece, was stopped only after word of it leaked out to the public. Let's hope it remains dead.

Then, just months before the Olympics were to begin, the cash-strapped provincial government was dragging its feet on having a pavilion at all. After the embarrassment in Beijing, there were fears it would be seen as a waste of money.

The federal government was resisting a partnership with B.C. to build a pavilion for Vancouver, too. When the province did finally announce a $7-million plan for an Olympic pavilion, it billed it as B.C.-Canada House, hoping for some federal cost-sharing. But after Beijing, where federal officials blamed the province for mishandling the pavilion, the Conservative government had no interest in teaming up with the province again.

Big mistake. Facing criticism for not building a Canada pavilion, the federal government finally decided to build its own $9.2-million facility just months before the Games began. It put out its proposal too late to erect any significant building and had to settle for a bid from a Chicago company. The result looks like a tent on a parking lot. Canada's architectural critics have not been kind.

"It's shameful, an embarrassment and it represents to a T the current Harper regime's concern for design, architecture and innovation in this country," Ian Chodikoff, editor of Architect Magazine told the National Post.

Chris Hume, the noted critic from the Toronto Star, said: "More than anything, this American-made canvas-and-glass prefab, slapped together in record time, could be mistaken for a public toilet, temporary of course, or maybe an emergency shelter. It would be a welcome sight on the streets of Port-au-Prince, but not a parking lot in Olympic City."

Let's hope the federal government takes a few cues from B.C. before Canada's next international moment, the World Exposition in Shanghai. It starts in May.

mcernetig@vancouversun.com