Play Illinois — led by Principal Owner and Landscape Architect Mike Maloney — is the 2025 Burke Playground Representative of the Year. As the exclusive partner for commercial playground equipment in Illinois, the team earned this recognition for a tremendous 2025 — built on a decade of design expertise, mentorship and community partnerships across the state.

When Mike Maloney sets a goal, he doesn't make a big deal about it. He just gets to work.

At the start of 2025, he told his Play Illinois team that Representative of the Year was the target. Then he stopped talking about it. By year's end, they'd earned that top spot — the highest recognition for Burke representative partners.

"I didn't really talk to anyone about it much after that," Maloney says. "We just put our heads down and went back to work."

Building a Team That Sticks

Maloney came to Burke in late 2014. He wasn't new to the industry — he'd spent more than 30 years as a landscape architect specializing in parks and playgrounds. He'd already built relationships with park districts, landscape architects and decision-makers across the state.

"I didn't have to introduce myself to the industry," Maloney recalls. "I just had to tell them what I was doing now."

Within months, he brought on Cheryl Parson. For the first few years, it was just the two of them covering all of Illinois. They still talk every Sunday night — a standing call that's become as much a friendship as a strategy session.

Today, Play Illinois is made up of eight professionals spread across the state, from the Chicago metro area to downstate communities like Carbondale. It's about families in more ways than one: Maloney's son Brogan joined in 2019, and Parson's daughter Kaylee came on about a year and a half ago.

"It takes about three years to really learn this business," Maloney says. "To get to a point where you have a good base of knowledge and a reasonable client base. It's like earning a master's degree."

He teaches his younger team members the things a landscape architect notices — elevations, grade changes, drainage, how a site's contours shape what's possible. And he watches them grow.

"It's been fun watching the younger people develop," he says. "We don't see each other a lot — but when we do, we really like each other."

The Design Difference

Maloney’s landscape architecture background shapes how Play Illinois approaches every project. Take Alpine Park in Rockford — a collaboration with a trusted landscape architecture partner Hitchcock Design Group that required dual ramp access to connect different site elevations. The project pushed the budget slightly but resulted in the first standalone hillside slide Burke has done.

“Kaylee and I got really creative with it,” Maloney says. “We were able to talk through some of the factors that the site allowed us to do.”

That kind of design conversation drives every project — listening to what communities want, working through options, finding where the site and the budget meet. “We treat every job the same,” Maloney says. “We don’t give someone special treatment because they have a $300,000 budget versus a $20,000 budget.”

What Keeps Them Going

There's a playground in Maloney's own neighborhood that he can see from his deck. His grandkids run over to play. He watches families gather throughout the day — kids climbing, adults using the fitness equipment, dog walkers stopping to spin on the inclusive spinner.

"You really see how people use it," he says. "From dawn till dusk."

That's the part of the work that stays with him. Not the numbers, but the sounds. Kids laughing. Families connecting. Communities coming together around spaces designed for exactly that purpose.

"I love the sound of their voices playing," Maloney says. "I really like what I do."

A Decade of Partnership

When the Representative of the Year recognition came, Maloney saw it as validation — not just of a standout 2025, but of everything that made it possible.

"This award wasn't just for what we did last year," he says. "It was really for what we've done for the last 10 years since we started."

For communities across Illinois looking for that same level of care and design expertise, Play Illinois is ready to help.

Play Illinois is the exclusive Burke representative partner for Illinois. Find your local Burke representative to bring Play That Moves You^® to your community.