The ice rink looked like a toilet bowl with a tank on the back, so ugly that the stewards of Central Park built an island of sediment dredged from the Harlem Meer, a man-made lake, to try to hide it from joggers and cyclists speeding past.

But now, $160 million and three years of construction later, Lasker Rink and Pool, the park’s biggest eyesore, is poised to become one of its main attractions as part of the new, 11-acre Harlem Meer Center.

When it is unveiled early next year, the new center will represent the end of the largest, most expensive restoration project in Central Park’s recent history. It is also one of the most significant recent public projects aimed at serving New Yorkers in the largely low-income communities surrounding the northern end of the park.

“Oh man, it’s a long time coming,” said Yusef Salaam, a city councilman representing Harlem, of the renovations. Mr. Salaam is one of the five men who were exonerated of a 1989 rape of a jogger in the northern part of Central Park. When he was a child, he learned how to swim in the old Lasker Pool — wearing sneakers, because its floor was littered with shards of broken glass.

After Mr. Salaam’s conviction was overturned and he started venturing back to the park, he and his family would enjoy days out at its southern end.