Ashley Parker/The New York Times

SAN DIEGO — If the news last summer that Mitt Romney had a $12 million expansion planned for his oceanfront property here helped portray him as a member of the top 1 percent, the new disclosure that the renovation includes elevators for his four-car garage is not likely to burnish his image as a man of the people.

Plans for the expansion, first reported by Politico and later obtained by The New York Times from a rival campaign, include a split-level, four-car garage with a “car lift,” an outdoor shower, and a 3,600-square-foot basement.

A visit to the Romneys’ beachside property on Monday — one of three properties Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, own — revealed a modest home for the wealthy enclave (at least from a street view) at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. But an official city “Notice of Application” from April 2010 highlighted the changes to come: plans to “demolish the existing residence and construct a new, approximately 8,105-square-foot, single-family residence on a 0.41 acre site.”

Mr. Romney’s pre-expansion home, which sits perched atop a concrete seawall and is further separated from the beach by a locked gate, offers stunning views of the Pacific Ocean. Mr. Romney had spent the weekend at his La Jolla home after an event in San Diego. On Monday, no signs of Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, could be found, though a group of teenagers smoking cigarettes sunned themselves against the seawall, and a homeless man set up camp a bit further down the beach.

The Romney campaign said that a “car elevator” was simply a mechanism for storing cars in tight spaces, but that hasn’t stopped Mr. Romney’s rivals from jumping on the details of the planned expansion. In an e-mail on Tuesday, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for President Obama’s re-election campaign, wrote, “But while Governor Romney has been quite specific about putting the finishing touches on his car elevator in La Jolla, he has hid many of his domestic and foreign policy plans under lock and key.”

And the Obama campaign also took a jab at Mr. Romney’s hiring of Matthew A. Peterson, a lawyer in San Diego, to ease the way for construction permits. Since 2008, Mr. Romney has paid Mr. Peterson $21,500 to lobby city officials for the renovation.

Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, sent out an e-mail that simply said: “Well, doesn’t everyone need an elevator for their cars? Even if you have to hire a lobbyist to secure it?”