CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday continued mounting their public pitches for where the Chicago Bears should build their next stadium in Illinois, even as the NFL franchise keeps up its flirtation with a move to Indiana.

During the groundbreaking ceremony for the Chicago Fire’s new — privately funded — soccer stadium near Soldier Field in the South Loop, the mayor sent another signal that he hasn’t given up on the Bears staying in Chicago, even though there seems to be little appetite for the team’s 2024 proposal to remain in their longtime home by building a partly taxpayer-funded domed stadium on the lakefront site.

“There is no better city for sports than the city of Chicago,” Johnson said in remarks to a room of Chicago Fire executives and other business leaders at the riverfront property where the new soccer stadium will go up. “I will say that it is so good to make sure at least one of our football teams in Chicago is good.”

Afterward the mayor told reporters he still believes “we can put together an agreement that works for the fans, the players, the ownership and the city of Chicago” to keep the Bears in the city.

“Keep in mind the circumstances are a little bit different because the stadium in which the Bears were investing in in Chicago, it’s a stadium that the city of Chicago owns, so they will be a tenant,” Johnson said, speaking of a potential new stadium at the Soldier Field site. “But the point being is that we can build stadiums in Chicago that we can create an opportunity that works for all of Chicago.”

Late last month, Indiana lawmakers took another step toward potentially luring the Bears across the border after a statehouse committee approved a plan to create an agency that would build a new stadium for the team.

Pritzker has since appeared to shut the door on a new stadium in Chicago entirely, focusing his efforts on Arlington Heights and leaving Johnson mostly on an island among elected officials in terms of the Soldier Field pitch.

Speaking at an unrelated news conference on Tuesday, Pritzker told reporters the legislative process is ongoing and he expects March 18 to be the next time the Illinois House could move on any proposals that would require state buy-in.

“They’re making a decision between the property that they own already in Arlington Heights, and property that they have looked at in Hammond,” Pritzker told reporters. “It is up to the state to consider whether there is infrastructure that we would provide them, and we clearly have said we would.”

The mayor has brushed aside Pritzker’s assertion that Chicago is off the table for a new stadium and told reporters that the Chicago Park District, which owns Soldier Field, needs a partner in Springfield.

Nonetheless, the view from the governor’s office remains that the current fork in the road is between Hammond and Arlington Heights. The latest bid from the Park District for revamping Soldier Field, with or without the Bears as a tenant, could complicate the team’s path in Arlington Heights given that the team would seek state funding for infrastructure as well as property tax breaks.

That could pit Chicago lawmakers against Pritzker and other legislators.