Atlantic Pines Golf Club

Atlantic Pines Golf Club, in Wells, is the Brian Silva-designed course that opened in 2008 as Old Marsh Country Club, built as an homage to the golden-age stylings of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor -- bold bunkering, contoured greens, and strategic width. It made an immediate national impression, ranked among GOLF Magazine's Top 10 New Courses in its debut year, and has been a fixture in New England Golf Monthly's regional rankings since. The club has since changed hands: it now operates under new family ownership as Atlantic Pines Golf Club, with an active program of clubhouse and course renovations underway.

What makes this a genuine golf-living story is the community built around it. The Homes at Old Marsh (also marketed as "At Old Marsh") is a private residential neighborhood of roughly 180 single-family homes on half-acre to two-acre lots, ranging from roughly 3,000 to 14,000 square feet of living space, built around the course's fairways. A social membership at the adjacent clubhouse -- pool, tennis, fitness center, and the on-site Brian Silva Grill -- is confirmed mandatory for residents, priced modestly at roughly $600/year per a community-review source, with residents also receiving a discount on golf itself (though golf access is not confirmed as unlimited or fully included). That combination -- a real, if inexpensive, mandatory membership bundled to residency, wrapped around a nationally-recognized course -- is a genuinely different access pattern from this market's other two anchors, Dunegrass and The Ledges, both of which are fully public with no residency-linked membership at all.

Wells sits between Kennebunkport and Ogunquit on Maine's Southern Coast, a few miles inland from Wells Beach and within five miles of both towns' shopping and dining -- giving Atlantic Pines/Old Marsh a quieter, more residential setting than the beach-town anchors on either side of it.