Dail was elected to three terms on the San Diego City Council from 1943 to 1955. Later he was twice elected mayor of San Diego, serving between 1955 and 1963. As mayor he promoted the development of the
downtown San Diego Community Concourse, which includes city hall and city offices as well as a civic auditorium; the project set off a wave of construction of skyscraper offices and hotels and started the revival of the city's downtown, which had been deteriorating. The city complex is now named the Charles C. Dail Community Concourse. He also spearheaded the development of
Mission Bay Park. Dail helped convince the
Regents of the University of California to locate a new campus, the
University of California, San Diego, in San Diego; ground was broken for the new campus in 1961. Dail had had
polio as a child, and in 1963 he convinced
Jonas Salk to locate the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies in
La Jolla, San Diego. The city donated 27 acres (11 hectares) of city pueblo land as a gift to construct the Institute. Dail was also instrumental in establishing a
sister-city relationship between San Diego and
Yokohama, Japan. As a result, the Charles Dail Gate in the
Japanese Friendship Garden in
Balboa Park bears his name. Dail declined to run for a third term as mayor in 1963, citing personal and business reasons. At the time, Dail's combined twenty years serving as a city council member and mayor was the longest period of elected service in San Diego's history. ==Death==