Developer Mike Wampold’s announcement Wednesday that he has secured a Marriott Autograph franchise for his planned luxury hotel in the Old LNB Building downtown—one block from a planned Courtyard Marriott—means there will be two Marriotts on Third Street.
It also, for now at least, means two hospitality businesses will be using the name Watermark. Wampold’s 148-room Autograph hotel will be called Watermark Baton Rouge. But just up the street, a reception and banquet hall on the newly redeveloped second floor of the former Latil’s Stationery building, is getting ready to open under the name Watermark on Third.
Someone’s going to have to change their name, and Wampold says it is going to have to be the reception facility, which is owned by restaurateurs Andy Blouin and Sean Malone.
“They’re going to have to quit using it,” Wampold says. “We had this well in the works before I ever heard of Watermark on Third.”
Blouin—whose 6,500-square-foot, upscale reception hall will open in the next few weeks—says his attorney is looking into the matter.
“We currently have a state registered trademark name and logo,” he says, declining further comment.
Blouin and Malone, through their limited liability company, Firebelly LLC, registered the Watermark trademark name and logo with the Louisiana Secretary of State in February. Their first recorded use of the name in the state was last November, according to records on the Secretary of State’s website.
Wampold, however, says he owns national rights to the Watermark name, which he says he purchased from the owner of the federal trademark—businessman Patrick Kennedy.
Kennedy owned the Watermark Hotel and Spa in San Antonio, Texas. He has since sold the property to the Omni hotel chain, but he has retained the federal trademark and licensed it to Wampold.
—Stephanie Riegel
