Two Queen Cities. One old. One new.

One celebrating the landing of a new corporate headquarters. Another wincing at the loss of an economic hub.

Chiquita's announcement Tuesday that it will move its headquarters to Charlotte means an exodus from Cincinnati of high-salaried supporters of schools, sports teams and charities.

Former Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken said Chiquita had been flirting with a move for years.

"I don't think it's an enormous surprise," said Luken, who's also a former Cincinnati TV newscaster and one-time member of Congress. "But it is a blow for a city that has historically been pretty good about keeping corporate headquarters downtown."

Cincinnati, still home to business titans such as Procter & Gamble, Kroger grocers, and Macy's department stores, has long prided itself on its Fortune 500 companies.

That corporate profile - along with the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, a Delta Air Lines hub that once had several international flights - were the city's marketing hooks over the last decade or so.

But the airport is down to one international flight, to Paris, and Chiquita's exit shrinks the city's corporate lineup.

"It's the perfect storm of negativity for Cincinnati," said a professional closely connected to that city's economic development community.

The reaction from Ellen van der Horst, president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, was a little more understated: "It's always disappointing to have a business leave the region, especially one as well-known as Chiquita. But it's part of business."

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Chiquita officials wanted access to a more multi-lingual workforce and had expressed dissatisfaction with the decline in available flights to foreign cities.

In the end, Cincinnati lost out to a Southern city with a busier airport and a skyrocketing Hispanic population.

"How many more companies like this do we need to lose before we get real, international airfare services over here?" wrote "Iluvcincy" on the Enquirer's Web site.

But "GeorgeRemuss" wrote that Charlotte's lustre proved crucial: "I don't blame Chiquita for leaving. ... Charlotte is well positioned for the future."

Much reaction focused on the loss of what the Enquirer called "a good corporate citizen."

A backer of Cincinnati sports and one of the largest supporters of the Junior Diabetes Research Foundation, Chiquita also had co-op programs for University of Cincinnati students.

Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre is known as one of the most enthusiastic fans of the Reds, the city's baseball team. An avid user of social media, Aguirre spent game nights tweeting encouragement to the players and rallying support for a Reds campaign to raise money for inner-city youth baseball.

But Luken, the former mayor, didn't see Chiquita as a company committed to planting roots in Cincinnati as deep as other longtime corporate patrons.

This was especially true after Chiquita was sold by financier Carl Lindner, who also bought and sold the Reds, Provident Bank and the Enquirer.

"Once Carl Lindner sold the company, it was a new day," Luken said. "These guys never got as involved in the community as the Procters, the Macys, the Krogers and other mainstays."

Tuesday, there was much debate in Cincinnati over what incentives could have kept Chiquita.

The offer by the city and the state of Ohio totaled $6.5 million - a fraction of the more than $22 million put up by North Carolina and Charlotte.

"It was like the Reds going up against the (wealthy) Yankees," said the Cincinnati economic development professional. "It didn't seem like Cincinnati brought its 'A' game to the table."

Aguirre said Cincinnati "did very, very, very little."

Later Tuesday in Charlotte, Aguirre addressed the Charlotte Chamber's annual meeting in a packed ballroom at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Aguirre drew laughs when he said the company looked forward to "residing in this landmark plaza downtown - or I should say, uptown."

He also invited the crowd to follow his online postings.

"I do hope some of you start following me on Twitter," he said, "because I think I lost some people in Cincinnati today." Observer staff writers Mark Washburn and John Arwood and The Cincinnati Enquirer contributed.