I suppose I am becoming a curmudgeon because 1x builds bug me -- not as much as compact double, but I still don't like them. I actually have had two bikes set up 1x10 and in both cases it was entirely sufficient for the use (one was a CX race bike and the other was a commuter), but I didn't like it anyway. The bikes just felt incomplete. I switched the CX bike back to 2x10 and sold the commuter.
My theory is that both compact doubles and 1xN are maladies inflicted on us because indexed front shifting is a bad idea but friction front shifting doesn't fit modern marketing paradigms. My reasoning goes like this:
1. The average rider in hilly terrain wasn't strong enough to live with a 52-39 crankset and the 12-27 cassette that had become the de facto maximum wide-range for 8/9/10-speed road bikes.
2. Indexed triple shifting always worked sporadically when set up by average mechanics and not maintained by riders.
3. Compact doubles were introduced to give non-heroic riders the wide gear range that they needed while simplifying the front shifting set up.
4. Indexed double shifting isn't generally superb, but it is generally acceptable. The move to compact doubles nudging shifting quality down a bit and led to more dropped chains.
5. The jump in gear between a 50T chainring and a 34T chainring leads to unsatisfactory shift patterns.
6. With the advent of 10-speed cassettes it became possible to create wider range cassettes while still maintaining reasonable spacing between gears. This is even more true with 11-speed.
7. With 11-34 cassettes available, it became possible to provide a good range of gears with a simple shift pattern using a 1x10/11 setup.
So all of that is kind of reasonable if you want to keep up with the newest technology, but the problem for a case like the OP's co-op comes in when "1xN is great" becomes an accepted truth and is blindly applied to bikes with a 6-speed freewheel.
Now let me say I am well aware that there were a lot of 1x5 bikes sold back in the day. Let me also say that I even have a bike that once had a 52-36 cottered crank with a 14-34 5-speed freewheel. But let me finally say that this bike was not fun to ride. The traditional 1x5 bikes were, I think, mostly townies -- a natural extension of giving 3-speeds a rear derailleur -- and are perfectly acceptable for that kind of use. However, I don't care what freewheel and chainring combination you're using, 1x6 has no place on a road bike that's going to be ridden as a road bike.
As far as 1x setups being more suited for strong riders, that may be true with mountain bikes, but I suspect the reverse is the case with road bikes. If someone chooses 1x on a mountain bikes, it's usually because they have decided that 30x32 is a low enough gear and they don't really need the 22x32 that the mortals use. On a road bike, however, the decision is usually not just that 42x34 (or whatever) is low enough, but also that 42x11 is high enough. Applying that to a 6-speed freewheel bike and deciding that 42x13/14 is high enough has taken you decidedly out of the realm of strong riders. As I said above, a bike like that is starting to look an awful lot like a townie.