PROVIDENCE — You may never have to walk in the rain again.

The owners of the Dunkin’ Donuts Center have begun building a pedestrian bridge joining the arena with the adjacent Rhode Island Convention Center.

When it opens in November, it will complete an uninterrupted, indoor pathway between the Sabin Street arena, the convention center, The Westin Providence hotel and the Providence Place mall.

The Rhode Island Convention Center Authority, an independent state agency, bought the Dunkin’ Donuts Center from the City of Providence in 2005 for $28.5 million. In addition to renovating it, the authority announced plans to join the two buildings to help lure conventions that require a large assembly space.

The sloped bridge will symbolize that vision, and its completion will coincide with an advertising campaign by the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau to market the newly named Rhode Island Convention Center Complex.

“It will help the buildings communicate,” James P. McCarvill, the authority’s executive director, said yesterday. “It’s really important. They can work very well together.”

Authority officials say the addition of the arena will help draw meetings of unions, religious groups, fraternal organizations and salespeople that require a stage and ample seating.

Those gatherings are typically held in the summer, when the Providence Bruins and Providence College basketball team vacate the Dunkin’ Donuts Center, and when business also slows at the convention center.

In the convention center’s main exhibition hall, a speaker can address about 3,500 people at a time. In the arena, that audience can reach 14,000.

The Dunkin’ Donuts Center will also be made available to conventions that exhaust all meeting and exhibition space in the convention center. The authority is renovating about five meeting rooms in the arena, and the performance space will be open for exhibits and banquets.

Two years ago, before the authority acquired the arena, the organizers of the Providence Boat Show used both facilities.

But that type of collaboration has been rare, McCarvill said. Now, he said, the connected complex will be able to attract larger conventions, helping to fill the hundreds of new hotel rooms that are opening in downtown Providence.

Construction crews began building the $1.4-million, 96-foot-long box truss bridge about a week ago. They have already assembled the steel skeleton, supported by two concrete buttresses and stretched about 19 feet above a private road leading to the convention center’s South garage.

By Nov. 14, the preassembled top section will be bolted in place, and tradespeople will have enclosed one side of the structure in metal panels and the opposite, street-facing section in 4,312 square feet of glass, according to Steve Duvel, construction manager for Gilbane Inc., the Providence company overseeing the $80.5-million renovation project.

Crisscrossing tension rods match the design of the convention center, opened in 1993. The structure will be the second major pedestrian bridge downtown. A so-called skybridge carries shoppers from the Westin to the mall, crossing above Memorial Boulevard.

Pedestrians will access the bridge using a concrete ramp in the new Dunkin’ Donuts Center lobby. It will connect to the third floor of the convention center, near the main exhibition hall.

Last month, construction crews demolished a convention center balcony to allow the bridge to connect directly to an existing set of glass doors.

Yesterday, ironworkers from Capco Steel were held aloft on a platform by an 80-foot boom lift as they unloaded tension rods from a 50-ton crane and attached them to the bridge.

“This is a major component of the renovation,” said authority spokeswoman Kerrie L. Bennett, touring the site in a white hardhat. “You provide a much larger venue for conventions and exhibitions.”

bgedan@projo.com