When New York City’s cultural czars revealed the choice of a new piece of public art for Long Island City late last year, the response was swift and withering.

Residents of the Queens neighborhood and others lit into the proposal — an eight-foot-long reclining human form painted vibrant pink — saying it was too bright, too big, too ugly and too expensive. Commenters on the Long Island City Post blog called it “Gumby’s grandmother” and “pink poop.”

“It doesn’t feel great,” said the artist, Ohad Meromi.

Still, the project has continued apace and Mr. Meromi said he hoped the installation would be completed by summer 2016.

Meanwhile, a simmering debate about the project has dovetailed with broader conversations about both the city’s public art program and the future of Long Island City’s thriving arts scene. On Wednesday evening, City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, whose district includes Long Island City, will host a town-hall-style meeting to hear residents’ concerns, including those about Mr. Meromi’s sculpture. Tom Finkelpearl, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, will join the meeting.

Since the 1970s, when a growing number of artists began colonizing Long Island City’s abandoned and underutilized industrial spaces, the arts have been central to area. The neighborhood now supports a cosmos of artists’ studios, galleries, museums and performing arts groups.

But the cultural scene, to a degree, has also been a victim of its own success in a now-familiar cycle. As Long Island City became more than an industrial hub, developers swooped in, embarking on a frenetic building boom and driving up property values which, in turn, forced out some of the very artists who had helped revitalize the area in the first place.

“Long Island City is arguably the fastest growing and most exciting neighborhood in New York City, and the reason that it is so attractive is because of the cultural community,” Mr. Van Bramer said. “We want to maintain a large cultural presence.”

Mr. Van Bramer said he expected the town hall meeting to be wide-ranging and include discussions about ensuring affordable housing and studio space for artists, as well as an initiative that he has championed to create a cultural master plan for the city.

But officials also expect that some attendees will want to vent about the sculpture.

The project, which is expected to cost $515,000, is part of the city’s Percent for Art initiative, which, under a 1982 law, ensures that one percent of the budget of city-funded construction projects is used for public artwork. The program is managed by the Department of Cultural Affairs, which has commissioned about 400 pieces of art, about 80 of which are still in development, Mr. Finkelpearl said.

Mr. Meromi, 47, was chosen to create a permanent piece for a median at Jackson and 43rd Avenues, a component of a major renovation of Jackson Avenue.

Mr. Meromi, who was born in Israel and lives and works in Brooklyn, said winning the commission was a big deal for him. “It is rare in the life of a sculptor that you get a chance to realize a project of that magnitude,” he said in an interview this week.

The reclining figure he proposed was meant to play off the velocity of life in New York City. He called it “Sunbather.” “It’s at rest, and for me that gesture of rest, of stopping, is some kind of revolt against speed,” he said. He wanted it to be a landmark for the community — with a “soft organic line” that would stand in contrast with all the modern, steel-framed buildings going up around it — and accented with “a bold color.”

“The introduction of color will be like a gift to the location, which is, like, gray and glass,” he said.

The project came to the wider attention of the neighborhood when city officials presented renderings of the work to the local community board in late November and early December. Criticism was muted, said Mr. Meromi, who attended the December meeting.

But disapproval erupted in online forums and elsewhere. Some people worried that both the size and the color of the sculpture could distract passing drivers and cause accidents. (“Chromophobia,” Mr. Meromi says.)

Mr. Van Bramer has declined to weigh in on the art itself. “The last thing you want is for politicians to be determining what is or is not art,” he said in an interview.

But he has responded to criticisms that the public art selection process needs to include more opportunity for public input, and is drafting a city bill that would mandate what he called “a more inclusive and more transparent process” in the selection for the Percent for Art program.

Mr. Finkelpearl said he has been working with Mr. Van Bramer on the bill. “In the big picture, we’d like to look at best practices nationally to determine whether it makes sense to revisit the law comprehensively,” the commissioner added.

One “Sunbather” critic expressed his displeasure with the process by making a sculpture of his own.

In December, Hunt Rodriguez, an artist from Bushwick, Brooklyn, installed his own protest piece on Jackson Avenue, on the sidewalk outside the Court Square Diner: two conjoined and brightly painted wooden pyramids, one standing vertically and the other laid on its side, with a sign that read in part: “This is not against the artist. It is against the misuse of our tax dollars.”

Mr. Rodriguez explained in an interview Tuesday that the standing pyramid represented “the love of the residents” and the fallen pyramid represented “the idea of the city doing something without the support of the community.” The sculpture cost him $351 in supplies, he added.

On Tuesday night, the guerrilla sculpture was still standing, untouched by the authorities and acquiring permanence, amid so much change, with each passing day.