Sleeving, as already mentioned, is your best bet.
I don't know how often, or how poorly things are happening, but on my block, I split the wall about that far down. The cylinder bore thickness decreases as the bore descends into the block, via some steps in the coolant passages, and I got an inch(ish) long split way down low in the bore. I forget, but perhaps about that low. About the only thing I could think was that some errant detonation event happened with the piston down low and it popped the bore.
I just went and grabbed another junkyard motor and quickly stipped it down and took to a machine shop for boring, but a sleeve would probably have been cheaper. I just had some suspicions about the other bores. But in this case - there's no suspicion that any of the other bores might be damanged so a sleeve would be easiest and cheapest.