Once the work gets started, one neighborhood nemesis—the local rat population—had better think about finding new digs. There’s an old underground restroom hidden beneath the southern tip of the Peter Cooper Park, long closed off and covered over. Some fear that this subterranean hideout is where the rats have taken up roost. This will be dug out and filled in, leaving the night scurriers without a place to rest their weary heads. If that’s not enough to drive them out, new illumination by Tillett Lighting Design, the team that brightened the Brooklyn Bridge underpass, should do the trick. We’ve heard it here once before, but now the transformation really is on the horizon.