Times suggests Atlantic Yards tower is sign of "rail yard conversion project" (not quite)

From tomorrow's New York Times Real Estate section, Long Island City: From Locomotives to Living Rooms:

Many of the rail yard conversion projects championed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg over the last decade have taken time to come to fruition.
Years after first being proposed, office towers are just now being built at Hudson Yards, on Manhattan’s West Side, and apartment buildings are finally going up at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.
But the efforts to remake Hunters Point, a waterfront section of Long Island City, Queens, where rail cars once rolled onto barges, are closer to schedule.

Actually, the "rail yard conversion project" going on at the Atantic Yards site is rather limited, and it has nothing to do with the first apartment tower (not "apartment buildings") under construction. 

The Atlantic Yards site is 22 acres. The Vanderbilt Yard is 8.5 acres. Only the western segment of the railyard--less than a third--is the site of completed or ongoing building construction: it serves as the northern half of the arena block.

The first tower is being built on terra firm, formerly a gas station and row houses.

There's no plan to build towers on the railyard for a very long time because that would require an expensive deck, key to this "rail yard conversion project."