A South Korean company that owns two lots on Kapiolani Boulevard hopes to use the state affordable-housing law to build a pair of condominium towers that would be largely reserved for moderate-income buyers and would be bigger than zoning rules permit.

SamKoo Pacific LLC shared plans for an initial 485-unit tower with the Ala Moana-Kakaako Neighborhood Board last week.

The planned tower, dubbed Kapiolani Residence, is on a 1.3-acre site at 1631 Kapiolani Blvd., mauka of the Ala Moana Hotel. SamKoo bought the property in 2007 for $15.5 million and had been contemplating what to build amid a wave of luxury towers popping up in nearby Kakaako.

A mainly moderate-priced condo was devised, though the company said the tower needs to be bigger than allowed by county zoning to be viable.

"What we have done is create an economically viable project that also is a responsible urban design,"Lowell Chun, a local development consultant working with SamKoo, told neighborhood board members.

The tower would be about as high as the roughly 400-foot Ala Moana Hotel, which is 50 feet higher than the limit for the property. The city is considering increasing that limit to 400 feet as part of its plan to promote transit-oriented development near a planned rail station at Ala Moana Center.

The density of the tower, which is designed with a free-standing 10-story parking garage fronting Kona Street, also would be significantly higher than permitted.

Zoning rules allow a floor area of 200,000 square feet on the site. SamKoo is proposing a floor area of 500,000 square feet. The city’s draft transit-oriented development plan would allow 400,000 square feet.

Chun said the size of Kapiolani Residence is not out of place for the area and will provide much-needed affordable housing.

"Ithink this is done in a way that will work with the community,"he said. "We intend to make this an affordable-housing project that is available to a lot of people."

Under the state’s affordable-housing law, qualified projects can be considered for exemptions to county zoning rules.

SamKoo intends to apply with the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corp., a state agency facilitating affordable-housing development, to qualify Kapiolani Residence as such a project.

A major qualification is making more than

50 percent of dwelling units affordable to households earning no more than 140 percent of Honolulu’s annual median income.

Chun said Kapiolani Residence will have

about 60 percent affordable units — 292 of the 485 units — and will make those units affordable to households earning no more than 120 percent of the median income.

Under HHFDCcalculations, 120 percent of the median income equates to $80,520 for a single person and $114,960 for a family of four.

Maximum prices for affordable units, if they were sold now, would be $426,000 for a single person and $608,200 for a family of four, under HHFDCguidelines and assuming a 3.75 percent mortgage interest rate. The planned Kapiolani Residence units range from studios to three-bedroom units.

Tim Yi, president of SamKoo Pacific, said it is too early to estimate prices for the market-rate units or a total project development cost.

Chun asked the neighborhood board for its support, though the board declined an invitation to vote one way or another.

SamKoo is hopeful that it can start construction of Kapiolani Residence by the end of the year. Approval of the plan is subject to HHFDCaccepting it as a qualified project, and City Council acceptance.

If plans for Kapiolani Residence are realized, it would be the first of possibly two projects in Hawaii for SamKoo, which is related to the Seoul-based conglomerate SamKoo Development Co., which traces its history to a cleaning supplies manufacturing business started in 1958 and has developed many residential and office buildings in South Korea.

Samkoo made a splash in Hawaii in 2007 when it bought a 1.4-acre former car dealership property at 1391 Kapiolani Blvd. about two blocks Ewa of the Kapiolani Residence site.

The price SamKoo paid, $26 million, shocked some local real estate veterans. The price amounted to $417 per square foot, which approximated record values set for the Kapiolani corridor in the early 1990s during the height of the speculative Japanese investment bubble.

SamKoo intended to build a luxury condo on this site, but the recession derailed that. Last year the company announced a new plan for a "landmark" 234-unit tower with a slim profile and applied for a building permit that estimated the project value at $190 million. The company is no longer pursuing that plan.

Chun said details such as tower height, unit count and timing will depend on how the market responds to Kapiolani Residence.