Business owners looking to set up in Detroit used to be required to put down their address more than 70 times across various forms. Now, that's down to three.

Quicken Loans Inc.'s philanthropic arm has helped Detroit's building department adapt its notoriously difficult permitting and inspection processes to speed up and simplify construction and opening a business.

The Quicken Loans Community Fund and Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department announced the public-private partnership Thursday afternoon at BSEED's offices downtown.

The city and Quicken Loans say the changes include making municipal offices easier to navigate, creating a "Quick Start Permitting Guide," improving online capabilities and redesigning forms to make them less laborious. Around 80 percent-90 percent of businesses' work can now be done online, department Director David Bell said at the event.

"All these things put together will make Detroit stand out in getting customers to the finish line," Bell said.

The city wants to respond to increasingly high demand for new business licenses and commercial building permits as more people want to set up shop in Detroit in recent years. BSEED issued 4,645 building permits in 2014, and has issued 5,842 so far in 2019.

Business owners often malign city approval processes for slowing their opening timelines.

Quicken Loans and real estate mogul Dan Gilbert's portfolio of companies know how to navigate city processes — Gilbert's Bedrock is the city's most dominant landlord and its four biggest, current development projects are publicly pegged at more than $2 billion. The Quicken Loans fund, however, gets complaints of confusion from the entrepreneurs it works with, according to fund vice president Laura Grannemann.

The fund approached the city, which had already begun reforms, according to Bell.

The Quicken Loans Community Fund, part of Gilbert's portfolio, has invested more than $200 million in various causes including tax foreclosure, unemployment, and entrepreneurship-boosting efforts such as Quicken Loans Detroit Demo Day and the holiday-season Downtown Detroit Markets.

For this latest project, the fund has contributed $90,000 in funding and in-kind services, and an undisclosed number of person-hours over the past three years. Work is nearly complete.

The philanthropic arm hired Alex Johnston, founder of Detroit-based civic design consultancy Cities Reimagined, to make the process "human-centered," Grannemann said. They did that by following businesses through the process and assessing what went wrong. Barriers Johnston found included lack of transparency, and lack of accommodation for those without English as a first language or with reading proficiency issues.

The Quicken Loans Community Fund wasn't contracted to redesign the process or add color-coding to the BSEED offices. Asked to describe the relationship, Bell said they "teamed up." Grannemann called it a "mutually beneficial relationship."

The changes are based on feedback gleaned from roundtables and more than 15 workshops, Johnston said, engaging around 25-30 entrepreneurs.

The changes include:

Updating the design of the building department's offices with "color-coded 'wayfinding' signage and directional pathways painted onto the floor to guide (business owners) to the right counter or office," according to a news release.

Redesigning forms, aiming to making them quicker to complete. For example, the number of forms a business needs to fill out in order to open is down from 85 to around 35. And they need to write their names once, down from 21 times, according to Johnston.

Making a "Quick Start Permitting Guide" available for prospective business owners that describes steps required to open in the city including zoning, permitting applications, inspections, certificate of occupancy and business license.

Creating a new online platform that "has a very TurboTax feel to it," with more common language and less jargon, Johnston said.

Employing Open Counter, a tech company whose platform walks users through the permitting process steps and estimates fees; this saved the department 400 staff hours in the last two months, according to Johnston.

Giving in-the-field inspectors mobile devices so they can more quickly manage inspection results, according to Bell.

"I think, historically, people believed you had to know someone to get a permit," said Tonja Stapleton, owner of Detroit-based Parkstone Development Partners and a former zoning manager for the city. "A lot of folks didn't know where to go in the city, who to talk to and they just assumed it was a very complicated and political process. I think (the city) didn't utilize technology, and it wasn't modernized. (Mayor Mike Duggan's) administration has done a lot to kind of diffuse that. Focusing first on customer service and then automating these various plan review and permitting processes has been amazing."

Parkstone manages development projects and helps businesses as they navigate city government processes, site selection and other hurdles. It has helped 80 businesses open, Stapleton said.

While it may have taken a business six months or more to get a construction permit in 2011, she now budgets three months for construction permits. But she has received them in as little as six weeks. And while city departments have struggled in the past to see the process from the business owner's perspective, recent improvements are increasingly looking at it from the customer's perspective, she said.

The problem "has always been resources" and the building department is "short-staffed in almost every single division," according to Stapleton, so she commended the use of outside assistance.

A continuing challenge, she said, is tying this automation into other departments such as the Department of Public Works, the Fire Marshal's Division and Detroit Water & Sewerage Department.

Greg Mangan, real estate advocate for the Southwest Detroit Business Association, said BSEED's online document submission system and open office hours to meet with multiple inspectors have made the construction process a bit easier, especially in the past year.

"The electronic plan review (for real estate projects) is a good step in the right direction," he said. "It is helpful, but there needs to be some bridging of the digital divide ... small construction firms or small-business owners, people that don't have access or have the knowledge or technical expertise sometimes see that as an impediment ... more assistance and tutorials (would help)."