One of our prospective commercial tenants wishes to use the name of our building as their business name. What should I do to ensure the building name remains our own when the tenant vacates in the future?

How much of the money they make are they willing to pay for this? Maybe some flat amount or better yet a percentage of the profits.

Here's a good story about a percentage deal: Someone close to me was given a difficult task of bringing a new product idea into reality and making it so the company could sell it for a nice profit. I recommended she ask for a percentage of the profits from this new product line if she was successful. 4 other teams from the same company had tried and failed over a period of 2 years. She was able to make it happen in only 4 months and the company made over 150 million on it the first year. So what is 2 or 3 percent of profits year after year?

Why don't they just say XX business located at the YY building?

If the name is that unique you might consider copywriting it or trademark it somehow.

I can understand reluctance because if they mess up, the name will stay attached to anything negative.

A local restaurateur bought a family owned dinner in my small home town. This wasn't a bad greasy spoon when the original guy owned it but he was getting up there in the years and operating a restaurant is many long hours, so he sold the place with owner financing.

The buyer still used the old name and the quality of the food went down hill. It went from a place I would go to to a place where the coffee and eggs were both served cool. The new buyer ended up folding as in a small town, word gets around quickly.

The damage was done already though....since they used the old owners business name. The original owner tried to open back up using the same name but the people never came back.

I would file a Trademark on the name in Texas, today. Should be able to do it online. In AZ it's like $10. Then you can negociate as to why they want to use it, and consider any pitfalls.

@ RayinPa - this is why I haven't opened a restaurant or service business in my town. People are just brutal and I've seen numerous businesses destroyed on Yelp, FB and TripAdvisor. I have a great idea for a theme restaurant and have considered either repurposing our building or building new on our lot next door. I "know" it would be a success.

Kinda off topic...

But I actually renamed a whole building one time to land a new commercial tenant.

(it had 6 lower paying tenants in building at the time that didn't really care about the "building name".

You could make it to your benefit if you required them in a legally binding document to change the name of their business if they move out of your building. Kind of like holding them hostage in the cost of rebranding the business.