How To Create Dynamic Storage Of Data

I'm a junior VB programmer and looking for some advice on this subject. I'm trying to create a chunk of code that will create dynamic storage for variables for use later by dynamic custom controls.

For example:
An INI file might have an entry in it that looks something this:
....
[var1] <-- this becomes the Storage name
description=My Variable
type=System.Int32 <-- this could be any valid VB type
last_val=456 <-- Other code would save the last value
....

And I want to access the data using a standard "property set" like so after it's created:
var1_reference.value = 55
I've tried using a generic class which works ok as long as I declare the variables at design time from within the design environment. But when I try to create them from the INI file it gets messy.

Here's the simple generic class i've constructed to test this:
Public Class GenericVar(Of T)
'
' Generic Symbol Class for data storage
'
Private VarName As String
Private VarType As Type
[Code] .....

Also, as each object is created (and they could be different types) I store a reference in an array to make it easier to keep track of, but I'm having a hard time getting access to the objects and their properties, and certainly cant seem to assign an event handler to it once its in an arraylist because the design time code doesn't know what "Type" it is in the arraylist of objects.