A Toronto landlord has been fined $3,000 for engaging in “a systematic campaign of harassment” and threatening a tenant who opposed an illegal commercial laundromat operating in her building.

An order from the Landlord and Tenant Board targets David Weiss and his company Life on Queen Inc./Westwood Holdings for issuing “serious threats” against tenant Maura Kilcoyne.

The landlord was ordered to pay fines of $1,000 and $2,000 to the Board for threatening and harassing Kilcoyne, and must pay her $611 for “out-of-pocket expenses.”

Kilcoyne said she has no plans to move.

“If I move, he wins,” she said. “Then he gets to ... put somebody else in there and jack the rent up.”

A summary of Kilcoyne’s evidence from the board states that the landlord decided to open laundry facilities at 2401 Queen St. E. to the public in early 2014. Kilcoyne opposed the “improper operation” of a business in the residential building, saying it would lower the quality of life for tenants and locals, according to the records.

The company owns 10 residential buildings in the Beach neighbourhood, according to its website.

Kilcoyne testified that she was the sole tenant to appear at city hall hearing in April 2013 over the move to open the laundromat. She was also part of a delegation to a Committee of Adjustment hearing on Jan. 28, 2015.

Kilcoyne told the Star that opposition to the laundromat was widespread.

The city’s Municipal Licensing and Standards department issued a notice of violation to the landlord in October 2014. The Committee of Adjustment also rejected the company’s variance application in February.

After the city’s notice of violation, the company had a sign mounted over the laundromat’s door reading, “Maura’s Laundry,” a move board member Roger Rodrigues wrote “was in no way an innocent business decision.”

“The Landlord was clearly singling out the Tenant and sending her a message that it had the resources to make her life difficult should she continue her opposition to the laundry shop,” Rodrigues wrote.

The company also sent Kilcoyne a form for early tenancy termination, according to LTD records, and a note from Weiss, calling her “the #1 s--- disturber” at the company’s Queen St. sites.

“There is an expression, ‘Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you,” the letter read. “You may not believe in that saying, but you will experience it!”

In another letter, Weiss warned Kilcoyne that he could take her to court, promising to “start the entire process again” and ultimately win if the court stayed her eviction. Weiss warned of impending “headaches and inconveniences” for Kilcoyne.

“All of this can be avoided if you find another place to live,” Weiss wrote.

“What is especially offensive, in my view, about [Weiss’] threats is that they came at a time when the Tenant was in the process of exercising her legal right to oppose what, in the end, the municipal authorities found to be an illegal public laundry shop,” Rodrigues wrote in the order.

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A city spokesperson said via email that the laundromat’s Willow Ave. entrance, just south of Queen, was prohibited. Staff found the windows at the laundromat papered over when they returned to the site in February.

The company also posted a letter from Weiss accusing Kilcoyne of harassment and asking tenants if Kilcoyne had “approached or harassed” them.

Weiss declined to comment when reached by phone on Thursday. “I’m dealing with lawyers now and I was advised just to tell you, that, you know, it’s not appropriate to comment right now. So you can print what you like to, and there we go.”

Weiss said he plans to appeal the LTD order. According to the Social Justice Tribunals Ontario website, this generally requires that a person “believe LTB’s order was not a reasonable interpretation or application of the law.”

In April, the company served Kilcoyne with a notice of termination, claiming the unit needed to be vacated by Aug. 31. An application to the board to terminate Kilcoyne’s tenancy was rejected.

Weiss likely saw the notice of termination and application, Rodrigues wrote, “as additional arrows in his quiver” to bully Kilcoyne.

An esthetics and massage therapy business now occupies the second floor, above the former laundromat site.

An investigation related to a zoning issue at the property remains open.

“I don’t have any details. Nobody said anything to me,” said business owner Dolores Wootton.

Correction - December 16, 2015: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Maura Kilcoyne appeared at a city hall hearing in March 2014.

