“Charles Street is getting duller,” said my friend Margaret. “The South End is more interesting.”

Margaret isn’t the only one complaining about the street’s health. I’ve heard it from several quarters. The most recent reason—banks.

Hingham Savings will move into 80 Charles, replacing a large antique silver and tableware shop. Unconfirmed rumors of Capital One moving into the Charles Street Market space won’t go away. Added to the problem is that nearby on Cambridge Street People’s United Bank moved into what once was a convenient hardware store.

Now this is not a complaint about banks or these specific banks. We need a few banks with a retail presence, since not all of us have submitted completely to online banking. One might wonder whether Beacon Hill can support three additional banks on top of the three already here, but if it can’t, that’s their problem.

The street is still varied. Tracy Hollander, who owns the Charles Street Market, but not the building, says he will be on Charles Street forever, so let’s hope so.

And John Corey, whose civic association committee has been studying Charles Street, points out that the street last spring had 24 home furnishing or antique shops, 36 shops offering clothing, gifts and other items, 18 restaurants or cafés, 26 shops offering services like manicures and framing and eight real estate offices.

The problem is the same with banks as it is with real estate offices, or any offices, for that matter. They’re not lively. With enough businesses like this a good retail street is destroyed. How much is enough? None of the retail experts I consulted knew exactly, but you know it when you see it. And after three real estate offices gobbled up good retail spaces in the recent past, we’re afraid of what we’re seeing.

Margaret said she likes businesses that offer a place for people to meet. It is rare for banks to fill that requirement but Cambridge Trust is the exception, where you always see someone you know. And that bank’s employees are some of the most active in the community. Besides, Cambridge Trust is not on a vivid commercial street.

Margaret’s first choice for local businesses are restaurants, cafés, and grocery stores. She likes the children’s shops and the clothing and accessory stores and Gary Drug and Charles Street Supply, of course. She doesn’t use the home furnishings and antiques shops much since she already has everything she needs. But step into most people’s houses on the Hill, and you’ll see that all of us have many items from those shops.

Margaret’s observations are seconded by retail industry experts, who have insight into why ruinous uses arrive.

“No bank or real estate office creates value in a neighborhood,” said Jesse Baerkahn, president of CityRetail, a retail advisory, development and leasing firm, based in Kendall Square—which, by the way, is on its way up in terms of retail.

“The reason you see banks and offices is that landlords are lazy,” he said. Real estate offices, for example, require little fit-up.

I asked Virgil Aiello, the owner of 80 Charles Street, why he allowed a bank to go in when there were retail shops with products Beacon Hill residents want more.

“It’s difficult for me to address the merits of whether there is a bank on Charles Street when DeLuca’s, in which I have a personal interest and is a vital service to the neighborhood, has met nothing but hindrance,” Aiello said. (DeLuca’s, Aiello’s grocery store, burned more than a year ago and Aiello has had trouble getting approvals from the city and the neighborhood for redoing it.)

“Over the years I could have rented to nail salons and real estate offices, but we wouldn’t do that,” he said. “Hingham Savings Bank is a first class operation. A stable business is an asset to the community.”

But most neighbors think that’s beside the point.

Baerkahn said, like Margaret did, that food and beverage offerings and many of them, are critical to a street’s success, because they bring traffic that keeps healthy the small shops we so desire.      One thing is clear—Hingham Savings is spending a lot of money refurbishing the space. Most landlords would like that.

Another thing is clear. Neither the neighbors nor the Beacon Hill Civic Association has been successful in influencing landlords about how to keep the street retail-healthy—and if it isn’t, landlords ultimately will be on the short end of the stick.

The landlords most amenable to the “keep retail healthy” on the street are the institutions. This is ironic because some people in the community believe—erroneously, I think—that institutions are a detriment to the Hill.

But the institutions are landlords who most respond to community pressure. Mass. Eye and Ear, for example, learned that the neighborhood didn’t like the law office with its closed blinds—I wondered what went on in there that they had to close the blinds. So they let the law office out of its lease early, and the lawyers moved on.

The word on the street is that the local ice cream purveyor, J. P. Licks, will occupy the space, but MEEI said no lease has been signed. J.P. Licks satisfies Margaret’s criteria for a good business on Charles Street. Let’s hope they are the ones.