How to best create and store APPLICATION variables?

I am using ColdFusion 9.0.1 I am taking over a site and the guy before me created about 100 variables and put them into the APPLICATION scope. I believe that his 100 variables were continuously being overwritten with each page load. Basically, he had this in Application.cfc:

APPLICTION.VariableOne = "SomeStringOne"; APPLICTION.VariableTwo = "SomeStringTwo"; APPLICTION.VariableThree = "SomeStringThree"; 

My plan is to keep it simple and yet very readable is to test for a specific structure in the application scope. If it's not there, create the structure and variables:

if (not isDefined("APPLICTION.AppInfo") or not isStruct(APPLICTION.AppInfo))

Of course, once the site is live and we are done creating all of the application variables, I'd move this into the into the onApplicationStart() method. The solution that I want has to be more about "readability" and less about "efficiency". Several non-CFers, but very experience coders will be using this and will need to "get it" quickly. Does my plan have any gaping holes or is it too inefficient? Is there a more readable way of creating and managing application variables?