CHICAGO — The city’s South Side will become home to a medical center able to handle adult patients with some of the most urgent, traumatic health problems, officials announced on Friday, answering what has been a yearslong fight over inequities in health care and the dearth of nearby care for people living in some Chicago neighborhoods.

At a cost of $40 million, a new Level 1 trauma center will open at Holy Cross Hospital, officials from the University of Chicago Medicine and Sinai Health System said. The two organizations said they would jointly operate the center, which drew praise from Mayor Rahm Emanuel. In a news conference, the officials described the development as a unique partnership and a significant development for Chicago. Officials said the approval process and construction would take at least two years.

For years, community activists had sought a facility that could handle the most pressing medical needs, including gunshot wounds, for those living on the South Side. While Chicago has four Level 1 trauma centers for adults, they are all in other parts of the city; the last such trauma center closed on the South Side nearly a quarter-century ago.

Advocates for a new center argued that long trips to faraway hospitals had jeopardized the lives of patients in a part of the city that includes neighborhoods where gun violence has long been a grave problem.