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It was a sweltering, standing-room only affair when a proposed 46-story condominium and its accompanying 107-foot-tall parking garage brought nearly 200 people to the ’s offices in Kakaako on Wednesday.

The skyscraper and parking facility are part of a contentious at the site of the old Honolulu Advertiser building on the corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and South Street, and the HCDA was holding a public hearing to let citizens voice their concerns.

As with most high-rise projects in Honolulu’s so-called “Third City,” this one hasn’t been without its controversy, and the agency that is overseeing its development will likely garner attention during the upcoming legislative session.

Hawaii Rep. Scott Saiki attended Wednesday’s hearing, and made clear that he and other lawmakers expect answers to their questions about Kakaako — questions that echo those of residents in the area.

“These issues affect not just the residents of Kakaako but residents throughout the urban core,” he said.

As the gentrifying bridge between Waikiki and downtown, Kakaako is becoming a hotbed for big-money mixed-use development. On an island where space is, by definition, limited and the population is growing, Kakaako has also become an intersection of debates over affordable housing, urban density and preserving a local sense of community.

Common worries include whether building heights and the existing infrastructure for things like sewer capacity and traffic will be able to handle the influx of people.

The controversial 801 South Street project, which is being developed by Downtown Capital LLC, is a 400-foot-tall, 410-unit condominium that is the that’s already under construction at the site. Between the two buildings, there will be a 107-foot-tall parking garage, if the project is approved. That garage that will exceed HCDA’s height limits of 45 feet.

But supporters of the project — many of whom work for companies slated to do the construction or sell the homes — said any concerns that residents have should be outweighed by Honolulu’s desperate need for affordable housing for working-class residents, including policemen, teachers and nurses.

“The inventory on the market just can’t meet the demand of first time home-buyers,” said Nathan Yoshimoto, one of many testifiers who described why they are the perfect fit for the 801 South Street highrise.

The best-received testimony, however, came from Saiki, who has recently taken a keen interest in the HCDA. Saiki, whose district includes Kakaako, and some of his colleagues have made the HCDA a current priority.

In July, Saiki held a townhall meeting in conjunction with Honolulu City Council members Carol Fukunaga and Ann Kobayashi and state legislators Brickwood Galuteria, Suzanne Chun Oakland, Tom Brower and Della Au Belatti.

The purpose of that meeting was to give the public a chance to ask HCDA Executive Director Tony Ching about how his agency was handling development of the 600 acres that make up Kakaako. It quickly turned into an inquisition.

On Wednesday, Saiki said he was commenting on behalf of his cohort of lawmakers, and much of what he said was answered with rounds of applause from the audience. Although he assured Ching and the HCDA board of directors that he and others wanted to be “positive and constructive,” he and his colleagues still have major concerns with how Kakaako is being handled.

“We do support the concept of creating more affordable housing for Hawaii residents and we do support the concept of modernizing Kakaako,” Saiki said. “But as we’ve said publicly many times, the modernization of Kakaako needs to be appropriate for the surrounding environment.”

He noted that lawmakers have many of the same concerns expressed by residents who have opposed the major developments taking place in Kakaako, including those related to building heights, setbacks, view planes and infrastructure.

There are also a number of questions about workforce housing, he said. Developers are allowed certain leeways related to density if they promise to incorporate pre-specified amounts of affordable housing in their projects. But Saiki said the Legislature needs to be assured that those requirements are actually being met.

The House majority leader even hammered HCDA over it’s public hearing process, saying it “curtails public testimony” because the weekday hearings are scheduled during regular business hours, meaning that it can be difficult for working individuals to attend those meetings.

(Following the hearing, the HCDA announced that it would offer more opportunities for public comment at other hours.)

While Saiki’s testimony was popular among those who are skeptical of the HCDA, it also put the state agency on notice. After all Saiki was who sponsored the bill that abolished the Public Development Land Corporation in the 2013 Legislative session.

It is unlikely that the HCDA will suffer the same fate, but the concerns about the agency appear to be similar to those about the PLDC, which was the state’s profit-making venture to develop public lands. Both agencies were created to expedite the development of property by allowing them to get around various environmental and planning rules, and both have been criticized for being too powerful.

“As we have previously stated, the Legislature created the HCDA in 1976 to give it the autonomy to plan and coordinate community development and renewal projects, not just in Kakaako, but in Kalealoa, Heeia and Hamakua on the Big Island,” Saiki said. “In doing so, the Legislature stated that the creation of HCDA would quote, unquote ‘serve the public interest.’ We submit that as part of its statutory duty HCDA must make a greater effort to specifically address increasing concerns related to overdevelopment, height density and infrastructure in the Kakaako district.”