Cannot create new site *under* install directory. Help?

I’ve been pulling my hair trying to figure this out, and maybe you guys have a solution.

So I have a website that for many years has been a normal website with a separate blog. SO https://www.website.com is just a website, and https://www.website.com/blog is the wordpress blog. Thus, WordPress is installed in /blog.

Well, now I have a number of mini sites that will all be dedicated blogs, BUT the root will not be. SO, website.com is just a website, but I need website.com/blog1 and website.com/blog2 and so on.

I converted /blog to multisite without any problems, but when I make new sites it wants them to be /blog/site1. If I change it to /site1, it breaks and cannot be found. I’ve researched rewrites and plugins and the works to get around this. The solution I keep coming up with is to move wordpress to the root domain, but since that cannot be a wordpress site, that won’t work.

How can I get Multisite to let me install new sites at the same directory level (not folder of course) as the main install?