Steven Cohen steers his vehicle to the back of a 20-acre industrial lot on the outskirts of Niagara Falls, Ont., moving around stacks and stacks of metal beams and piles of coiled and long rebar. These are the steel building blocks of Canada’s next condo towers , bridges and other major infrastructure projects, but that’s not why they can’t stay here.

“Can you see that house?” he asks while pointing to a dark line in the distance after driving up to a rocky berm at his property’s edge. “What I can tell you is that’s supposed to be 500 metres away, but it’s only something like 80.”

About two decades ago, developers built a golf course on a neighbouring wooded lot that had been owned by a rail company. A few years later came Thundering Waters Village, a community of about 250 or so homes,

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