Salt Lake City-based Stellar Senior Living LLC, a retirement-center owner-operator formed earlier this year, has acquired the former Fairwinds Coeur d'Alene retirement center and has renamed it North Star Retirement Community.

The Coeur d'Alene facility, which has 131 private apartments, is located at 2340 W. Seltice Way, in northwest Coeur d'Alene. It had been owned by Lytle Enterprises LLC and operated by an affiliate, Leisure Care Inc., both of Bellevue, Wash., says Becky Monday, North Star's executive director.

Stellar Senior Living's acquisition includes the former Fairwinds Coeur d'Alene real estate. The property is comprised of 4.6 acres of land and the building, which has a three-story, 104-unit independent-living wing, and a two-story, 27-unit assisted-living wing.

The terms of the transaction weren't disclosed. The Kootenai County Assessor's Office lists the taxable value of the land and improvements at $8.9 million.

Fairwinds Coeur d'Alene opened in 1994. Monday says the ownership transition is going smoothly and the new owners encourage input from the employees.

"We have a combined experience spanning decades," she says of the North Star staff of 51 employees. "Stellar Senior Living has embraced that and wants us to be part of the creative process. It's an exciting time to be at the ground level."

Monday has been executive director at the facility for more than two years, and prior to that was marketing director at a retirement community in Spokane Valley.

The North Star name was selected through a contest involving staff and residents, Monday says.

The company is designing a new logo and is soliciting bids for signage-replacement work.

North Star is one of four former Leisure Care-run facilities that Stellar Senior Living has bought since Evrett Benton, of Salt Lake City, and his sons Aaron and Adam founded the company in February, Monday says.

Adam Benton says Stellar Senior Living agreed to rename the Coeur d'Alene property because Lytle Enterprises and Leisure Care own and operate other properties under the Fairwinds name, including Fairwinds Spokane, a 152-unit retirement facility at 520 E. Holland, on Spokane's North Side.

Stellar Senior Living also is looking to buy other properties, Benton says.

"We do plan to continue growth through acquisitions," he says.

Adam says his father in 2000 founded Newton, Mass.-based Five Star Quality Care, which today operates more than 250 senior communities throughout the U.S., and resigned from that company in 2008 to head up a Mormon mission in Argentina.

He says the senior Benton decided to launch Stellar Senior Living as a family-run company after returning to the U.S. last summer and settling in Salt Lake City.

Stellar Senior Living's other retirement centers are Farrington Court, a 50-bed facility in Kent, Wash.; Lincoln Court, a 148-bed center in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Winslow Court, a 158-bed complex in Colorado Springs, Colo.