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Nancy Walton Laurie, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune, has donated $35 million to the University of Missouri for a new basketball arena. … Sears, Roebuck and Co. is looking into opening freestanding stores for future growth, basing its decision on the success Target Corp. and Kohl’s Corp. have enjoyed in that format. The shift, however, may not occur until 2004, as Sears continues to work through some restructuring. … Mass Market Retailers named Royal Ahold the U.S. Mass Retailer of the Year for 2001. Previous winners are Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart Corp. and Fred Meyer Inc. … A former Bradlees in Union Square in New York City served for two weeks as the home of The Salvation Army’s WTC Toy Shoppe. The program gave out free toys to children who lost family members or whose parents lost jobs as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks. … Watch out, CNN: Financial cable channel CNBC has signed a three-year licensing agreement with airport retailer Paradies Shops to open CNBC brand stores. The shops will feature a large screen playing CNBC, as well as network merchandise such as coffee cups, videos, hats and clothes. … Canadian sheriffs stopped off at the Champlain Place Shopping Center in Dieppe, New Brunswick, to rustle up prospective jurors. Shoppers were randomly loaded onto buses and carted off because the court had exhausted its scheduled list. … Zondervan Corp. of Grand Rapids, Mich., a large publisher of Bibles and Christian books, said its sales jumped immediately after last year’s terrorist attacks. Since Thanksgiving, Christian bookstores have reported weekly sales increases of as much as 40 percent over the previous year’s levels. … To help control costs, Federated Department Stores has shut down its Macy’s catalog and Bloomingdales.com. It will focus solely on Macys.com in hopes of breaking even in two years. The move brings a $50 million charge to the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings. … A St. Louis-area man who dons a Santa Claus outfit during the holidays was asked to leave Westfield Shoppingtown South County for violating the center’s “no costume” policy. Westfield imposed the rule, which bans costumes of any kind at its malls, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, a 6-year-old boy who was dressed as Santa and handing out presents from a big, red bag was kicked out of the Bellis Fair Mall, Bellingham, Wash., because he was competing with the mall’s Santa and creating liability issues for the center. “I was cuter than their Santa,” the boy told local reporters.

— Dave Bodamer